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Ffi\ ^373. /^./o

►

TRANSFEf^RED TO
FINE ARTS LIBRARY

HARVARD

COLLEGE
LIBRARY

TRANSFERRED TO
FINE ARTS LIBRARY

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

BY
BIBGE HARRISON

WITH Twany-vovB, KETRODVcnom of

BBFSBSBNTATrVX PICItmBS

BWBTH EDITION

NftW YORK
CHABLES SCSIBNEB'S SONS

1920

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ffK^iiyik'fo

.y.^^*

C^'*'

PMMed Oetebtr, 1900

UNIVERSITY
.LIBRARY

■''" • ' * ^^ /' ■/

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J. S. H.

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FOREWORD

This little book represents the ful-
filment of a promise to put into per-
manent form certain impromptu talks
on landscape painting given before the
Art Students' League of New York at
its summer school at Woodstock, N. Y.
No effort has been made to elaborate
the themes treated, the writer feeling
that what might be gained in literary
form might very well be lost in spon-
taneity and conciseness, of statement.
It is hardly necessary to say that these
little talks make no claim to infallibil-
ity of judgment. They simply repre-
sent the present beliefs and convictions
of a painter who is himself still a stu-
Iviil

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FOREWORD

dent ; but they are sincere, at least, and
"straight from the shoulder."

It is to be regretted that the art of
color printing has not yet reached a
stage of development where it can be
trusted with the reproduction of a mas-
terpiece of landscape, which often de-
pends for its beauty on color-tones and
color-transitions of extreme delicacy.
In the present volume it has been
judged best to confine the reproduc-
tions to simple half-tones in black and
white — to give no color rather than
color which is false and misleading;
and the illustrations here included are
therefore presented, not as adequate
representations of the works them-
selves, but as hints and suggestions
only of the qualities which give to those
works their distinction and their beauty.

Thanks are due to the editors of
Scribner^s Magazine, The North Amer-
I villi

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FOREWORD

ican Review, The International Stvdio,
and Palette and Brush for permission
to reprint here certain of the chapters
which have abeady appeared in the
publications mentioned.

B. H.

Woodstock, N. Y., 1909.

I»«l

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CONTENTS

I. Landscape Abt in Gknkbal . . 1

n. Color Ift

m. Vibration 81

IV, Refraction 47

V. Values 05

VI. Drawing 78

Vn. Composition 89

VIII. QUALTTT 99

IX. Pigments 107

X. On Framing Pictures .... 123

XI. On ScHooiis 131

XII. The Arts and CaAm • • • • 141

Xm. Mural Paintinq 147

XIV. On Vision 164

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CONTENTS

GBATTUI PAOS

XV. Thb Importance of Fearlessness

IN Painting 158

XVI. The Sub-Conscious Servant . . 164

XVn. Temperament 178

XVin. Character 189

XIX. What is a Good Picture? . . 199

XX. The True Impressionism . • . 207

XXI. The Future of American Art . iS8i

Isfil

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ILLUSTRATIONS

J. B. C. COROT

** Landseape** Frontispiece

J. F. MILLirr FAONO PAa«

** The Shepherdess'' 10

AKTON MAI7VE

'M Flock of Sheep** n

CLAUDB MONBT

** The Bridge at Arg&nteuU*' ... 84

WINSLOW HOMER

''The Fog Warning*' 44

D. W. TBTON

** TwUight, Autumn" 60

CHARLES H. WOODBURT

*'The North AUantie*' 74

H. W. BANGER

''Landscape** . »0

PAX7L DOUOHERTT

"Land and Sea" . . . . • . 104

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ILLUSTRATIONS

FAOMa rA«B
E. W. RBDFIELD

"r^fledJBam" 11«

ALEXANDER HARRISON

''Le Crepuscule*' 1«6

CHILDE HASSAlf

^'Brooklyn Bridg§*' 18«

W. L. METCALF

*' Summer MoonUghi'* 148

W. ELIfSR SCHOHELD

'* Winter in Picardy*' . . . . • 154

LEONARD OCHTliAN

''Wood Interior'* 166

BRUCE CRANE

''November HUU*' ...... 174

BEN FOSTER

"Early Motmriie** 186

J. ALDEN WEIR

"New England Factory ViUage'* . 106

BENST O. DEARTH

"Moonriee"' 20«

KMIL CABLBEN

"Landeeape"* t08

[riT]

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ILLUSTRATIONS

FAava PAOB

BIBOE BABRI80N

''WoodHockMead(yw$inWifder*' . «16

W. L. liATHROP

*'At Dusr' ««8

CHABLE8 MBLYILLE DEWST

'* October Evening*' «40

GEOBOE INNE88

**AuiumnOak$'* «48

!«^l

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

LANDSCAPE ART IN GENERAL

For some occult reason in which the
two factors of race and psychology
are intimately blended, landscape art
in its best expression is and ever has
been confined within the narrow geo-
graphical limits of Northern and West-
ern Europe. Oriental art — ^the art of
Persia, Japan, and India — has always
been more or less abstract and symbol-
ical; and, as the art of a people invari-
ably reflects the character of the race
which gave it birth, we may deduce with
111

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

certainty the character of the Oriental
from the characf^ of his art. By revers-
ing the same reasoning we reach the con-
clusion that the simple existence of our
Aryan ancestors (lived close to nature
in the constant companionship of ele-
mental things) has found expression
in the landscape art of their remote
descendants. The artistic temperament
is no growth of a day. It has its roots
in the far-away beginnings of a people,
and we make no unwarranted presump-
tion in asserting that the landscape
or marine painter of to-day is at last
giving expression to the groping in-
stincts and ideals of his cave-dwelling
forbears. The blinding storms with
which they battled, the mountains they
scaled in the pursuit of game, the waves
they rode in their primitive canoes, the
hard winters that froze their blood, and
the soft spring suns that warmed them,
[«]

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LANDSCAPE ART IN GENERAL

have all been woven into the fabric of
the race. In this way only can we ex-
plain the fact that the peoples of North-
em Europe have alone been able to
comprehend and place upon canvas the
ever-varying moods of nature — ^savage,
cruel, and relentless at times, and at
times exquisitely gentle, brooding, and
poetic.

What is more difficult to explain, how-
ever, is the fact that this ability should
only have developed and ripened with-
in the last hundred years. Of course,
viewed in the larger sense, European
pictorial art, as a whole, is a compara-
tively modem thing — a mere matter of
four or five centuries. But in its earliest
development it was in no sense an ex-
pression of out-of-door life or of out-
of-door feeling.

This is doubtless in part explained by
the fact that the earliest European art

[8]

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

was an Oriental derivative (see the By-
zantine school), and that it remained
throughout the whole of the Italian
Renaissance in the service of the Ori-
ental religion which we had imported
from Palestine. Moreover, the Italians
were themselves more or less Oriental in
character, with the subtle southern tem-
perament and the southern mental bias.
There was little of the cave-dweller or
the viking in their ancestry.
However this may be, it is quite certain
that the old masters knew little about
landscape — and cared less. Their con-
cern was with humanity; its joys and
its sorrows; its loves and its passionate
hatreds; its wars; its pageants; its faiths
and its superstitions.. Landscape to
them was never more than a stage
setting, a background against which
the human actors played their parts.
Viewed simply in this light, it was not
[4]

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LANDSCAPE ART IN GENERAL

only adequate, but frequently artistic
and admirably beautiful. Nevertheless,
it was not landscape at all in the mod-
em sense of the word — ^landscape as we
know it. It was conventional in form,
false in color, and devoid of atmosphere
and luminosity.
Not until the early years of the nine-
teenth century, and then in far-away
England, did the first true school of
landscape make its appearance. A
small group of painters, the best known
of whom perhaps were Constable,
Crome, and Bonington, went out into
the fields, and brought back pictures
which were the first true impressions of
out-door nature ever placed upon can-
vas. Their achievement was unique.
Indeed, it was one of the most as-
toimding intellectual feats of all time,
and it has never received a fraction
of the praise which is its just due.
[5]

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

Art, be it remembered, is a thing
of infinitely slow growth, each school
building upon the fotmdations prepared
by its forerimners, each generation add-
ing its mite to the general store of
knowledge and experience.
The English portrait men of the
same period, for instance, although fine
painters, simply followed in the tracks
of the old masters. There is nothing es-
pecially original in the canvases of Rey-
nolds, Gainsborough, or Romney. But
this little band of landscapists, with no
artistic parents, with no predecessors to
point out the way, suddenly evolved a
totally new art out of thin air. Their dis-
coveries, it is true, were confined to the
realm of color, but their achievements
in that domain were sufficiently remark-
able to give England a place which she
could never otherwise have had among
the art-producing nations of the world.

[6]

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LANDSCAPE ART IN GENERAL

They were the first to see and to record
the pearly tones of out-door nature, and
their technical bequest to posterity was
an extended gamut of grays and mauves
and lilacs which remain upon the ar-
tist's palette to the present day,

A scant half-dozen of their pictures
drifted over to France, and there be-
came the inspiration of a new art move-
ment, which finally resulted in the great
school of Barbizon. Millet and Troyon,
Corot and Rousseau incontestably pro-
duced greater work than Crome and
Constable, but their pictures were all
painted on the lines marked out by the
Englishmen. Indeed, it is questionable
if we should have ever had a Barbizon
school had it not beei^ for the iconoclasts
across the Channel.

While the great Barbizon school of
painters was still in its prime, there ap-
peared upon the artistic horizon another

[7]

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

band of innovators who have since be-
come known as the French Impression-
ists or Luminarists. They were in reality,
as their name implies, painters of light,
and their technique was founded upon
the scientific principle that light is essen-
tially prismatic. White, being made up
of the three primary colors — ^red, yel-
low, and blue — should so be painted,
they declared, the three pure pigments
lying side by side upon the canvas — and
the same with red, with yellow, and
with blue; there could be no blue so
powerful that it would not be qualified
with touches of red and yellow, no
yellow so brilliant that the red and the
blue were not felt in its composition,
no red so intense that the blue and
the yellow did not play across it. The
work of these men really seems to vi-
brate with light, and the word "vibra-
tion,** first employed by them, has now

18]

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LANDSCAPE ART IN GENERAL

been permanently added to the artists'
vocabulary. Under the leadership of
Pissaro, Sisley, and Monet they deliv-
ered a message which future artists can
never afford to ignore.

But, while their discovery is sound in
principle, no entirely satisfactory tech-
nical method of applying it to the paint-
ing of pictures has yet been discovered.
It is certain that the dots and dashes
and cross-hatched strokes of pure color
generally used by theLuminarists do not
render the effect of nature as seen by
the ordinary cultivated eye. The veteran
Monet himself has lived long enough to
recognize this, and in his more recent
work he has abandoned his early mili-
tant method, while retaining the general
principle of broken color.

This is one of the unsolved problems
of art that we moderns have to work
out. Another is the question of how
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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

best to convey the impression of motion
upon the rigidly quiescent surface of a
canvas. This has never been accom-
plished, but to assert that it is impos-
sible would be a hazardous statement.
Still another problem derives from the
limitations of the human eye. A good
photographic lens will see every leaf
upon a tree or every individual in a
crowd of ten thousand people. The hu-
man eye can see at best but a dozen or
two of leaves or people, the remainder
producing the effect of a more or less
indefinite blur. How is this blur to be
rendered with just sufficient definition
to produce the desired effect upon the
spectator ? It is quite certain that other
problems will arise, problems as unsus-
pected to-day as was the prismatic
theory of light a hundred years ago. It
is impossible of course to particularize.
One small discovery frequently leads to

{10]

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5 ^

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LANDSCAPE ART IN GENERAL

a much greater one, and the only thing
we can predict with certainty is that the
unexpected will occur. But we do at
least know that the door is ajar, that
the glorious sunlight is out there, just
beyond, and that nothing can keep us
longer cooped up in-doors.

fill

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COLOR

We are all born color-blind. The most
perfect eyes in the world cannot see one-
quarter of the colors which are known
to exist in nature. Those of us who are
fortunate, it is true, are able to diflfer-
entiate with reasonable exactness the
three primary colors which go to make
up our limited human color-scale — ^but
what about the tones which certainly
exist above the ultra-violet band and
below the infra-red ?
For convenience, the full color-scale of
nature may be divided into four octaves,
of which less than one-quarter is taken
up by the prismatic scale of the rain-
bow, which includes all the colors visi-

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COLOR

ble to the human eye. Immediately be-
low the line of infra-red, at the point
where the human vision ceases to record
color-impressions, there begins a series
of vibrations which we can only feel as
warmth; and still lower down the scale
is another series which the human ear
records in the form of sound. Yet we
know of a certainty that these vibra^
tions are also potential color-waves,
that each note of music carries its own
special color-note, whose quality and
beauty, alas! may never be known to
man, owing to the limited range of his
vision.
However, no one can with certainty
affirm that this may not be one of
the joys that await future generations.
Nothing is beyond the range of possi-
bility. Already, by means of the fluoro-
scope, we are able to extend our vision
somewhat, and peer over a little into

[IS]

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the realm of the ultra-violet. And, if it
is held that a wise providence, at the
beginning of things, limited our sensory
nerves to the record of such impres-
sions as were essential to the physical
existence of the primal creature, thereby
confining our later aesthetic activities to
the exploitation of a given range of sen-
sations, a certain regret is nevertheless
permissible when one thinks of the be-
wildering color-feast that might await
us in a Wagner overture or a Beethoven
sonata. What a fascinating problem it
would be, for instance, to work out the
color probabilities of some great mas-
terpiece of music, and fling them glow-
ing upon the translucent page of a vast
cathedral window. K the time ever
comes when man is able, by means of
some miraculous transformer, to gaze
upon music-color, it is safe to venture
the prediction that it will be found to

[14]

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be harmonious and beautiful in pro-
portion to the harmony and beauty of
the music upon which it is based.
This is guesswork, of course, but it
rests upon a strong basis of probability.
Our actual knowledge of the subject is
at present limited to mathematics. The
velocity of the impulses has been noted
and the number of the vibrations has
been counted. We know those of sound
to be comparatively slow, there being
but 4,000 vibrations to the inch in the
highest treble note of the piano. Above
this on the ascending scale comes a long
series of vibrations of which we know
little or nothing; and it is not until we
reach 36,000 vibrations to the inch
that we come again within the range
of human sensory consciousness. This
number represents the rate of vibrar
tions in the red note of our prismatic
scale. The rate of vibration increases

[15]

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

throughout the scale until with the
ultra-violet it reaches 61,000 to the inch.
Here we step out once more into the
unknown.

Yet color has no actual existence. It
is only by courtesy that we can use the
word. Nature is a monochrome save
when there are living eyes to see it. The
trees are not really green, nor are the
flowers red and yellow and blue. Each
object simply reflects rays of light which
vibrate at a given rate of speed; and
these rays, smiting upon the sensitive
retina of the eye, produce the impres-
sions which we know as color. Were it
not for the retina there would be no
color; and when the sensory nerves of
the retina are partially paralyzed or de-
ficient, as in the case of the color-blind,
nature appears to the eye in her true
monochromatic garb.

The human eye resembles closely the

[161

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COLOR

photographic camera, both in structure
and in its manner of functioning. At the
front in both is placed the lens, with
its diaphragm to control the quantity of
light which enters the recording cham-
ber, this function being performed in
the human eye by the elastic iris, which
contracts and expands automatically as
the light waxes or wanes. At the back
of the camera is the sensitized plate,
and at the back of the eye is the infi-
nitely more sensitive retina, overlaid by
the optic nerve, with its millions upon
millions of minute tentacles, reaching
out to seize upon every fleeting color
and form that passes before the lens.
These little transparent filaments (so
infinitely minute that the point of the
finest needle is like a fence-post in com-
parison) are divided into two distinct
varieties, known respectively as rods
and cones. The rods are straight and

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

pointed like needles, and the cones are
somewhat blunt at the extremity.

We are told that the number of these
nerve filaments reaches the astonishing
total of about 137,000,000, of which
only 7,000,000 are cones; but it is with
this comparatively insignificant num-
ber of 7,000,000 cones that we artists
have particularly to do. It is the func-
tion of the cones to record color,
while the needles take care of the
light

If each of us had only received the
7,000,000 cones which are his just due,
all would be well. Unfortunately, this
is not the case. Nature abhors a dupli-
cate, and no two human beings are
similarly endowed in this respect. To
the favored few she has given an unfair
share of the precious cones, and others
she has deprived of their birthright.
The fortunate ones are the great color-

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COLOR

ists of the world, while those bereft
are the color-blind.

Now we, as artists, could afiPord to ig-
nore all this scientific side of the color
question, were it not for the fact that it
makes clear certain things which it is
well for us to know. In the first place,
it shows us the futility of any serious
attempt to cultivate the sense of color.
We are bom with a certain given number
of -color-cones, and with just* that allot-
ment we must be content to go through
life, for there is no known way of in-
creasing their number, or of augment-
ii^ their eflSiciency. This eflSiciency may
be decreased, however, either by a sud-
den shock, by paralysis, or by abuse of
tobacco. In partial compensation for
the depression bom of the knowledge
of this ruthless law, is the further knowl-
edge that the artistic personality of
a painter must be chiefly credited to

[19]

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

the working of this same law — ^for our
sense of color is primarily due to the
varying number of color-cones with
which each of us is endowed. It is in
color, more than in any other artistic
attribute, that the temperamental qual-
ity of a painter's product shows itself
most clearly.

In more than the strictly scientific
sense heretofore noted, color is very
closely allied to music. Both are sen-
suous and passional, playing directly
upon the emotions and producing their
effects by some mysterious appeal to
the subconscious, whose ways have as
yet eluded us. Both, in their highest
expression, come nearer to the perfect
ideal of beauty as felt and understood
by humanity than any other form of
art. Finally, both are stimulating and
mentally suggestive, while attempting

no direct intellectual expression; and
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COLOR

this is the test of the highest form of
art — ^that it should stimulate the im-
agination and suggest more than it ex-
presses. This emotional attribute of
color is keenly felt even in a work of
art as devoid of any intellectual appeal,
as a Turkish rug or a Japanese ceramic;
but when color is used purposely to
enhance and offset some poetic mood
of nature, as in a Venetian sunset by
Gedney Bunce, or a spring morning by
Corot, its poignant charm is overpower-
ing and irresistible. It is hardly neces-
sary to say, however, that it requires
the intuitive genius of the master to
accomplish this result with certainty.
Those of us who are gifted only with
the average, normal color-sense, cannot
hope to rise to similar heights; but we
can nevertheless learn something from
the great ones — ^if not how to climb the
heights, at least how to avoid the pit-
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falls. Where the color-sense is not in-
fallible, for instance, it is safe to avoid
the brilliant tones, to deal in a gamut of
quiet and delicate hues. I have a friend
who, though color-blind, is a clever and
successful painter. His pictures sell well,
and I doubt if one of his patrons has
ever guessed that he must label the red
and the green on his palette in order
to tell them apart. Discovering his
misfortune only after several years of
study, he determined to see if by limit-
ing his palette to the scale of yellows,
blues, and grays in which his sight was
normal, adding only a little touch of
red or green here and there to heighten
the effect, he might not still produce
creditable pictures. He was, fortunately,
a good draughtsman, with a fine sense
of the picturesque in his arrangement
of mass and values. For his specialty
he wisely chose town-scapes and street-

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•s

"^ "I
1 ^

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COLOR

scenes, thus eliminating altogether the
dangerous problems of the greens ; and
his success (for he has taken many
medals and received many honors) shows
at least how much may be accomplished
by pure intelligence in the avoidance of
insurmountable obstacles and difficul-
ties.

Another useful point that we may
learn is the emotional effect of the dif-
ferent colors. The warm colors, the
yellow, red, and orange, are always ex-
citing, stimulating, sometimes irritating,
and in the end fatiguing. Red, as is well
known, always enrages a bull; and in a
lesser degree it affects other animals
and birds in the same way. A red skirt
floating in the wind is the best protec-
tion to the poultry-yard, for the chicken-
hawk will never approach it. With man
the stimulating effect of this color ap-
pears to be pleasantly exciting rather

[«3]

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LANDSCAPE PAINTING

than disagreeable when taken in mod-
eration; but did a wrathful deity desire
to punish mankind with a specially
hideous form of torture, I could im-
agine nothing more dreadful than that
he should change all the green in the
world into screaming scarlet. Imagine '
a bright vermilion world under a
brilliant sun, and tell me how long
it would be before all the inhabitants
would be raving maniacs.
The cool colors — ^blue, green, mauve,
violet, and all the delicate intervening
grays — are, on the contrary, restful
colors in the emotional sense; and the
wisdom of the choice of these tones for
the landscape scheme of the world is
hardly open to question. Moreover, it
is well known to all expert household
decorators that these tones are always
the most satisfactory for the walls and
all large spaces in interior decoration;

[«4]

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and that the powerful notes of red, yel-
low, and orange should come in only
as a spot here and there to enliven the
effect. If we carry the same idea into
the domain of purely pictorial art, we
shall see how the restful beauly of a
gray-green landscape by Corot is en-
hanced by the tiny red bonnet of his
peasant woman.

While it is, alas! only too true that any
personal and individual progress in the
domain of color is debarred by physical
law, it is nevertheless a fact that in the
broad and world-wide sense, most of
the progress made in art in the past two
centuries has been made in the domain
of color. For one thing, we have in the
meantime moved out of doors. From the
quiet, subdued, and restful light of the
studio, we have stepped out into the
gay and palpitating sunlight; and in so
doing we have had to meet and conquer

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many new and fascinating problems,
problems whose fundamental color-
scheme is the reverse of the one which
had for a thousand years engrossed the
attention of the older artists. In the quiet
north light of the studio, illumined only
by the sky, the lights were cool and the
shadows warm; in the open air, on
the contrary, the lights are warm and
the shadows cool, for out here in the
open the gay yellow sunlight is the source
of illumination, while the shadows catch
only the cool reflections of the sky- At
the present time it is hard to conceive
how difficult it was for the first land-
scape painters to make this simple
change in their point of view, how te-
nacious the old tradition of the studio
proved to be, and how very slowly it was
abandoned to make room for the simple
truths of out-of-door nature. Even after
the new law had been fully recognized

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and accepted^ the methods of the older
masters were adhered to. So great and
true a colorist as Corot, even, con-
tmued to "'rub m'' his shadows m the
warm browns of the sixteenth century
painters. Of course, this "rub in*' was
later painted over with the violet and
pearl-gray tones of out-door nature, *
but the brown underlay has begun to
"strike through'* in many of his pict-
ures, and it may in the end seriously
impair some of them. It was not un-
til the "luminarists*' came along with
their gay and militant iconoclasm that
the old tradition was wholly cast aside,
and the pearly stream of out-door color
at last flowed pure and free and un-
defiled. And if it happens (as it very
well may) that we shall also cast aside
the luminarists' patchwork system of
prismatic spots and splashes, we shall
nevertheless be eternally their debtors

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in that they freed us from the fetters
that bound us to the old system of
in-door painting, and gave us a fresh
palette of pearl and opal and lapis-
lazuli, in place of the old snufif-colored
affair of our fathers. Thanks to them,
it is not possible for the worst of our
modem landseapists to use such dis-
tressing color as is to be found in the
best of the Hobbemas and Cu3rps and
Ruysdaels of the sixteenth century.
What developments in the direction of
color the future may hold in store for
us, it is of course difficult to say. One
thing, however, is sure; the mathe-
matics which govern the laws of color
will be worked out and tabulated, as
have those relating to music; so that it
will be possible and easy for any one,
either expert or layman, to produce a
harmony in color by the simple appli-
cation of the prescribed formula. But

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beyond this the mathematicians' contri-
butions to art will have little value.
Its direct benefits will be found to be
negative rather than positive. While it
may prevent the perpetration of jarring
discords, it will hardly make possible
the creation of masterpieces; for here
again the personal equation comes into
play. Lacking the note of personality,
no real art is possible. A musician of
my acquaintance, having discovered
that when the law of mathematics
was applied to a sonata by Beetho-
ven, the theme worked out faultlessly
to a seemingly inevitable conclusion,
decided that the process could be
reversed, and that a given theme, if
correctly figured out, would undoubt-
edly produce a musical number of
faultless beauty. He put his theory into
practice and made a sonata accord-
ing to this system. His production was

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impeccable — ^and absolutely worthless.
When will the world learn that art can-
not be manufactured ?

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The most splendid achievement of the
nineteenth century in painting, and its
best legacy to the future, was the discov-
ery of the technical means by which the
scintillating effect of living light could
be transferred to the dead and rigid
surface of a canvas. Of this the old
masters had absolutely no conception.
The discovery belongs to our genera-
tion, and is a distinction of which any
age might well be proud — ^for it is the
only important step in advance made
since the great Renaissance of the fif-
teenth century. Without it landscape
art had hardly been possible — ^land-
scape art, that is, in the modern sense

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in which we know it. There were indeed
many landscape painters among the
older masters — ^Ruysdael and Cuyp,
Hobbema, Salvator Rosa» Claude, and
even Rembrandt on occasion. But, owing
to a curious psychological phenomenon,
none of these men were able to see
straight out of their eyes once they were
in the open air. They painted land-
scape, but landscape in which the fields
and the hills and the trees bore no rela-
tion to the skies that overhung them,
in which the shadows were warmer in
color than the lights, in which browns
took the place of violets, and in which
(owing to ignorance of the laws of
vibration) the surface of the canvas
nevei entirely disappeared from view.
As I have previously stated, the dawn
of the new movement was seen in Eng-
land, when Constable and his confreres
carried their easels into the open, and
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brought back studies wherein the pearly
tones of out-of-door nature were for the
first time accurately seen and noted.

A few of these pictures finding their
way to France, were eagerly studied by
a group of young Frenchmen, who,
tired of the hide-bound conventions of
David and Delaroche, were quick to
recognize and absorb the new light.
Armed with this fresh knowledge, these
men in their turn went out into the
fields, and looked and studied and
painted; and thus grew up the great
school of Barbizon.

A little later the artistic world was
startled by the appearance of the
French impressionists or luminarists.
According to them, nature had spread
her palette upon the heavens in the
form of the rainbow, where all who
looked might see and und^stand it.
And everywhere and always, on hill

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and dale, on rock and tree, so long as
light endured there must also be the
rainbow — attenuated and diminished
in power, it is true, but with its three
primary and prismatic colors, locking
and interlocking, shifting and shim-
mering and playing across one another
in an iridescent dance of color that
was, or should be, always clearly visi-
ble to the eye of the trained artist.
And as they saw nature so these men
painted their pictures, laying the pure
pigments side by side upon the canvas
in strokes and dots or dashes of red
and yellow and blue which, seen at the
proper distance, were supposed to fuse
into the desired tones and masses, while
at the same time retaining a luminous
quality of their own never before seen
upon canvas.
I can remember the first exhibition
which these men gave in Paris in the

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little rotunda behind the Palais de
rindustrie; and the bewilderment and
scorn with which it was received by the
critics and the older painters. I can re-
member also the heroic struggle which
they made against apparently hopeless
odds; and we all know how they finally
won the long fight, proving their point
so conclusively that no one to*day
thinks of questioning it.

But while all painters now admit that
the prismatic theory of light as applied
to the art of painting is both scientifi-
cally correct and artistically admirable
— ^that it is practically impossible to
secure luminosity in a picture without
some sacrifice to the principle, it is
nevertheless open to question if the
crude 'and primitive method invented
by the French Impressionists is neces-
sarily the last word on the technical
side of the matter. We must have

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"vibration'* in a picture, it is true, be-
cause without vibration there can be
no light, but may it not be possible to
secure the necessary vibration without
loss of "quality,"* that charm of surface
with which we would not willingly part ?
There are many, many paths by which
the problem may be approached. In-
deed, one of the chief delights of the art
of painting lies in the fact that each
artist does, and of necessity must, in-
vent his own technique; for his personal
technique is an inalienable part of the
personal vision which makes his art his
own. Nevertheless there are in a broad
sense only four general methods of
painting with oil colors, from which
(used either in their direct and simple
expression or infinitely varied and com-
pounded) all of our personal technical
methods must be drawn. First we may
mention the method used by so many of

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the old masters, which consisted in a
solid underpainting in black and white
with a slight admixture of red. In this
method the whole scheme of the picture
was built up with these three pigments,
and all of the drawing and modelling
was accomplished without any attempt
at color. Then, after a very thorough
drying, the work was completed and
the color obtained by a series of very
thin glazes drawn over the dried and
hardened surface. This method, al-
though wonderfully sound in itself and
lasting in its results, must of course be
discarded by the modem painter for
the reason that it precludes all possi-
bility of vibration.

Of the three remaining systems one
other is entirely bad for the same reason
— ^it does away with vibration. This
system consists in mixing the tones
evenly and applying them to the canvas

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in smooth flat masses in much the same
manner as a house painter paints his
door or cornice. There remain then
practically but two systems from which
*the modem painter is at liberty to
choose. The first of these is the spot and
dash method used by the Impressionists
and their school. It must be clear to
any one that this system, while giving
beautiful results in the way of luminos-
ity, does not logically follow the forms
of nature, or reproduce her siu^aces,
and it must therefore be regarded as
an imperfect and a temporary manner
which is destined to be superseded in
time by some more supple and expres-
sive technique.

The last of the four systems men-
tioned and one which has gradually
come to be adopted by the vast majoriiy
of our best landscape painters is one in
which vibration is obtained by means

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of a cool overtone painted freshly into
a warm undertone, care being taken
not to mix or blend the two coats and
not to cover up completely the under-
tone, rather letting it show through
brokenly all over the canvas; the vibra-
tion being secured, naturally, by the
separate play of the warm and the cold
notes. Neither alone would accomplish
this purpose, nor would the neutral
gray that would result from a too thor-
ough mixing of the tones in the final
brush-work.

This method has first of all the great
advantage of being thoroughly logical;
for in nature herself the undertones
are represented by the local color of the
various units — ^leaves, grass, rocks, and
good rich earth; and these are always
warmer and more vivid in color than
the lights dropped upon their surfaces
by the over-arching sky. But the method

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has the still greater advantage of bemg
wonderfully supple and responsive —
lending itself not only to the infinite
variations of technique demanded by
differing temperament in the artist, but
allowing endless latitude for any and
all desired changes in composition or
mass after the picture is placed on the
canvas; for all of these changes can be
made in the undertone itself before
the overtone is applied, and therefore
before any attempt to secure vibration
has been made. Indeed the whole pic-
ture in all its exact values can and
should be built up in this preliminary
covering of the canvas, for the vcdtie
of the overtone must in every case ex-
actly match the value of the undertone.
While we wish to secure broken color,
we must avoid broken values, for they ut-
terly destroy atmosphere. Any one who
wishes to prove this to his own satisf ac-

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tion can readily do so by making the
following experiment. Paint a sunny
sky in two simple tones, using, say,
delicate gray pink for the underlay and
blue green or green blue for the overlay,
varying the color from the horizon up
as it occurs in nature. In the first ex-
periment mix the overlay with extreme
care until its value exactly matches that
of the underlay. Then mix another lot
to the green blue either slightly darker
or slightly lighter than the underlay.
Apply these tones each to one-half of
the prepared sky, and you will find
that the sky painted with the perfectly
matched tone will fly away infinitely,
will be bathed in a perfect atmosphere,
while the other half of the canvas will
remain merely paint and canvas, and
will have no atmospheric quality what-
ever. The explanation of this is very
simple — ^nature deals in broken color

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everywhere, but she never deals m
broken values. The color dances, but
the values "stay put."
As to the general tint of color of the
undertone no rule can be given, for it
can never in any two pictures be alike.
It will vary infinitely, according to the
effect to be painted, and also according
to the temperament of the artist. There
would seem to be only two rules that
cannot be broken: first the undertone
mvM be warmer than the overtone, and
second it must never be brown; and this
for the excellent reason that out-of-door
nature abhors brown, and never uses it.
Even the house-painter's most venom-
ous effort in this direction is generally
met by kindly and all-forgiving mother
nature with some gray reflection from
the sky to mitigate its worst virulence.
The one weak spot in the technical
armor of the Barbizon painters was

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their tenacity in clinging to the tradi-
tional recipe of the brown rub-in. And
although this was allowed to dry thor-
oughly and was then completely painted
over with pearly tones that were true to
nature, the browns are now beginning
to strike through to the surface — ^to the
serious detriment of some of the finest
pictures on earth.

Now when the fullest acknowledg-
ment has been made of our stupendous
indebtedness to the discoverers of pris-
matic painting, it will be wise for us to
recognize the limitations of the system;
to admit that there are very many effects
in which it must be used with extreme
caution, and others in which it had best
not be employed at all. If we frankly
envisage the fact that its chief function
is to endow our dead pigments with life,
with the power to convey in a picture
the joyous impression of dancing light,

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we shall understand where these limita-
tions begin. As the system gives its best
results in the translation of brilliant
sunlight, so, as the light decreases its
value decreases, until in a low-toned
moonlight it may become positively
detrimental. It can easily be seen that
in this subdued light the sibilant vibra-
tion of powerful color-tones would be
fatally out of place and their use detract
seriously from the brooding sense of
mystery which gives to night its most
poignant charm.
We must not forget, moreover, that
another weakness inherent to the sys-
tem lies in the physical impossibility of
securing with pigments and brushes any
approximation to the infinitely fine
and delicate color vibration of nature —
where no spot or dash or stroke of pure
color is anywhere visible; and that our
best efforts in this direction are there-

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fore only a compromise — ^that owing to
this compromise our best technique of
vibration remains at the present time
more or less obtrusive, and that any
technique which obtrudes itself is to
that extent bad technique; for tech-
nique, as Millet so truly said, "should
always hide itself modestly behind the
thing to be expressed."

Finally let us frankly admit the fact
that vibration has little to do with at-
mosphere in a picture (in spite of much
wordy argument to the contrary). A
Whistler nocturne, for instance, which
is painted without the slightest vibra-
tion, or any attempt at broken color,
may swoon in the most exquisite bath
of atmosphere, while a vibrant Monet,
Tvilh a few hard edgesj may lack all
atmospheric quality.

Atmosphere in a painting is only se-
cured by the use (conscious or un-

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conscious) of the laws of "refraction,**
a much more subtle and elusive visual
phenomenon of which I will say a word
in the following chapter.

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What is refraction — ^refraction as ap-
plied to art ? When I first had to speak
to my own students of this most elusive
but most important quality, I found
myself curiously handicapped by the
fact that there was no word in the Eng^
lish language to describe it. A careful
search of the dictionaries revealed noth-
ing that met the need. The French
word envelope and our own "lost-edge'*
were descriptive of the result only and
not of the cause. Neither radiation, nor
reaction, nor reflection, nor ambience
fully defined the thing which it was de-
sired to describe.

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Piracy seemed the only way out of
the dilemma; so I boldly seized upon
the word refraction and forced it willy-
nilly to assume the new role. And
while it was necessary to twist it far
from its original meaning I have faith
that with growing years it will come
to carry gracefully the full burden of
definition.

For the purposes of this paper there-
fore the reader will kindly assume re-
fraction to stand for that intimate eflFect
of one mass of color or value upon its
adjoining mass which results in the
"lost-edge/" and a general diffusion of
tone, thus giving to pictures their atmos-
pheric quality.

Now refraction is only in a very lim-
ited sense an objective fact. It is mainly
a vistud fact whose operation is due to
the imperfect construction of the lens
of the human eye. The scientific fact is

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that the edges of things are sharp and
hard as a rule. This is amply proved
by the photographic lens, which gives
us a clear-cut definition all over the
plate which the human eye could never
hope to compass in looking at nature
through its own imperfect instrument.
And if the camera were still more per-
fect, if there were no question of focus,
it would probably give us an edge
everywhere as sharp as the traditional
Toledo blade.
But this scientific fact would still re-
main an artistic lie. Fortunately, we
painters have to do only with impress
sums and not with realities. For these
impressions we must rely solely upon
the lenses which God has given us; and
as a painter I congratulate myself daily
that the lens of the human eye was de-
signed not at all after the pattern of
the lenses adapted to the camera, the

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microscope, and the various other scien-
tific instruments. As we are now pro-
vided» nature is infinitely beautiful to
us; while it might have been a hideous
nightmare of sharp and cutting angles
or edges, without rest or relief any-
where.

It is not necessary for our purposes to
enter here into the physiological struc-
ture of the human eye. It will be enough
to state that its radius of exact vision
is extremely limited; so limited in fact
that at a distance of six feet from the
eye it would hardly be possible for any
human being to enumerate accurately
the spots on a target four feet in diam-
eter, while holding the gaze rigidly
fixed on the bull*s-eye. Beyond the ra-
dius of twelve inches from the centre
the image begins to blur, and this blur
increased rapidly, until out of the tail of
the eye on either side we get only an in-

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definite consciousness of things rather
than any genuine vision of things them*
selves.

It is curious when you come to think
of it, how many untold centuries it has
taken mankind to recognize this sim-
ple visual phenomenon, which every one
of the race must have been experienc-
ing ten thousand times a day for ten
million years; and how few there are
even to-day who are fully cognizant
of it.

A gentleman of marked intelligence
and culture once berated me for what
he termed the artist's impudence in giv-
ing to the public a smudge of green-
ish brown or of gray up against the sky
and asking them to accept it as a tree.
"Why/* he said, "I can see every leaf
on that oak tree in the meadow yonder.
And so can any one whose eyesight is
normal."

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My reply to this was to pin a card to
one of the oak's lower branches and ask
my friend, standing at ten paces, to tell
me how many of the leaves he could
count without shifting his gaze from
the white card.

"Well, by Jove!'* he presently ex-
claimed, "I can't count up to fifty/'

"What do the rest of the leaves look
like," I asked, "a more or less indefi-
nite blur?"

"Yes! Just a blur."

"Well," I said, "now you understand
just a little of the meaning of the word
refraction."

But the new knowledge did not seem
to console him. He continued to regret
the loss of all those leaves. I could not
convince him that it would have been
a disaster had he been obliged to see
each individual leaf of all the millions
which the tree doubtless carried, and in

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addition to this, to be conscious of all
the twigs and blades of grass and other
infinite details around about.

Now any interesting picture motive
generally has a focus, or centre of inter-
est on which the artist's eye rests with
especial pleasure; and in view of the
visual limitation just described it is evi-
dent that this portion will appear much
more definite in outline than the out-
lying regions of the composition; which
will become more and more blurred, as
they recede, with the softened or lost
edge everywhere. This is refraction;
and as the eye sees it, so, without ques-
tion, the hand should paint it.

But there are other motives — certain

of Whistler's nocturnes, for instance —

wherein the eye broods dreamily over

the whole scene, not resting fixed upon

any one given point of interest; and

these should be painted precisely as
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Whistler painted them, the refraction
distributed evenly all over the canvas.
Whistler, in fact, was past master of the
art of refraction, its one great and su-
preme prophet; and it is to the con-
summate and most artistic use which
he made of this one quality that his
work owes all of that emotional, ap-
pealing, and poetic charm which is its
distinguishing trait.

Of course every artist of any training
at the present day is more or less aware
of this phenomenon, otherwise his pict-
ure:^ would not find acceptance at the
hands of the juries, for they would be
hopelessly hard and edgy and unatmos-
pheric. No one, for instance, would to-
day think of painting the spots of sky
showing through the interstices of a large
tree with the tint he had mixed for the
sky out in the open on the other side of
the picture. If he did so paint these

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spots, they would shine out like elec-
tric lights and he would instinctively
lower their value at once. Here the law
of refraction has come into force again,
and the visual no longer accords with
the actual. The sky behind the tree of
course is in reality just as light as the
rest of the sky, but the refraction from
the surrounding dark mass of foliage
has robbed the spots of much of their
power of light and has softened them in
every way.
But while all good painters to-day are
aware of refraction, and (whether con-
sciously or unconsciously) use it in their
work, very few, I think, have any con-
ception of the far-reaching effect and
control of the law. I am myself abso-
lutely convinced that the refraction ema-
nating, we will say, from a large dark
tree standing up against a sunset sky will
affect the sky and gradually lower its

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value out to its very centre; and that,
per contra, the darkest spot in the tree
itself will be found to be near its focal
point, owing to the inward refraction
from the sky — ^for naturally refraction
acts both ways, from light to dark as
well as from dark to light. Whether it
is necessary or advisable in practical
painting to utilize the law up to the
extreme limit, is of course a point that
is open to discussion. As painters our
business is to transmit to picture-lovers
through the medium of our pictures the
emotions, and the impressions of strength
and power, or of poetic beauty which
have come to us direct from nature; but
in doing this we are not called upon to
saddle ourselves with more difficulties
than are absolutely necessary. Indeed
it is by means of the wise selection and
synthesis of the elements which are es^
sential to his work and the ruthless elim-

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ination of all such as are unessential
that the consummate artist shows his
calibre. Nevertheless I can recall certain
canvases by Corot, poetic masterpieces
of the first order, in which the very
fullest use of this law was made. It
can do no harm at least for any painter
to keep the law always in mind, to be
used whenever its use will add an ele-
ment of beauty or of distinction to his
work.
In addition to the above defined the-
ory, a long and close study of the law of
refraction has left on my mind the strong
conviction that the out-worn and rather
cheap practice of vignetting was not
without a certain sound basis of justi-
fication in the underlying laws of na^
ture. If you will bear in mind the fact
that the colors and values that are seen
out of the comers of the eyes, are, on
account of their very situation, able to

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affect only a very limited number of the
sensitive nerves of the retina, you will
understand that the force of their im-
pact mu9t be proportionately less than
those which come to the eye from the
full centre of vision; and if you are will-
ing to try the experiment of lookmg for
five minutes at a given scene in nature,
keeping the gaze fixed during all that
time on some focal point — ^a church
steeple, for instance — but throwing the
minXs eye constantly back and forth
from outside margin to centre and from
centre to outside margin again, it will
gradually dawn upon you that there
is an actual and very marked visual
difference in the color and value in-
tensity of the two radii. I am sure,
therefore, that the eighteenth-century
artists who made use of this law in
their work were fundamentally correct
in their intuitions; but the excess to

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which they carried it landed them in
the quagmire of the commonplace and
vulgar. Nevertheless, I am certain that
no picture in its extreme comers should
be painted with quite the same vigor of
technique or strength of color or of value
as in its natural focal centre. Indeed,
a careful study of certain masterpieces
shows that wonderful results have occa-
sionally been obtained by the reserved
and masterly use of this principle.
In the " Shepherdess/' by Millet, for in-
stance, the sense of immensity and of
limitless space which marks and dis-
tinguishes that great canvas is derived
largely from the extremely subtle use to
which he put his knowledge of this ob-
scure phenomenon.
So far I have spoken of refraction only
in its relation to values. But there is
also color refraction; and here its action
is much more in harmony with the scien-

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tific laws of color, for its first and im-
mediate effect is to call up the com-
plementary. I sat one day out in the
blazing sunlight on the white painted
deck of a river steamer holding in my
hand a crimson ticket, in the centre of
which a square hole had been perfo-
rated. After glancing through this hole
for an instant I handed the ticket to my
companion and asked her to say what
color the deck appeared to be as seen
through the square opening. "Why!
it is brilliant green,"' she replied, at
the same time putting the ticket aside
to see if in reality the deck had
been painted green in that particular
spot.
This, of course, was an extreme case ;
the very powerful scarlet, under the
compelling stress of the intense sun-
light, had simply conjured up its com-
plementary in an exceptionally bril-

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liant and dramatic demonstration. But
in greater or less degree, the law is al-
ways at work. Any painter who has
posed his sitter against a red back-
ground, for instance, must have noted
how the red ground brought out the
green tones in the flesh. And has it ever
occurred to you why never a portrait
was painted against a bright blue back-
ground. Simply because there has never
been found a human being modest
enough to stand for the jaundiced pre-
sentment of himself that would be the
natural result — ^yellow being the com-
plementary of blue.
It results from this that no color has
any definite and fixed existence of its
own — once it is out of the tube. It is
changed and varied infinitely as its sur-
roundings change and vary. Even when
it is fixed definitely under the varnish
of some masterpiece, it remains subject

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to the same old law, and, to a certain
extent, can be made attractive and
lovely, or forbidding and ugly accord-
ing to the background against which
the picture is hung.

Of course in the scale of subdued col-
ors color-refraction works feebly, and it
is therefore of minor importance to the
landscape painter, though, as I have al-
ready noted, Corot knew how to make
good use of the little crimson cap on
his peasant women; for the tiny spot
of red doubled the beauty of his deli-
cate greens. But the figure painter oc*
casionally inda a knowledge of this
law of great value; as, for instance,
when he wishes to play upon the emo-
tions by the simple use of pure color.
Splendid effects have been produced
in this way by Monticelli, by Frank
Brangwyn, and more recently by the
Spaniard SoroUa.

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It is fortunate, perhaps, that the limits
of space here draw a line, for the things
that might be said about refraction are
endless. I will, however, add one parting
word in r^ard to Us technical side.
How may we best secure the lost-edge
and the other qualities deriving from
refraction while maintaining crisp draw-
ing and a free and agreeable brush-
work. In this we can hardly do better
than study and follow the two great
masters of the art, Corot and Whistler.
Prepare for the refraction, as they did,
by lowering values as you approach
the edge, so that the final stroke which
draws your limb or your tree may be
as fresh and as crisp as possible without
being hard; and if you are painting in
broken color — ^that is, using prismatic
vibration to secure luminosity — ^then do
all this preparatory work fully and

carefully in the undertone, so that the
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final painting may be accomplished
with that dash and freedom which, say
what you may, will always remain an
admirable quality in a picture.

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VALUES

Op late years the English term "values**
has entirely replaced the Italian "chiar-
oscuro" by which painters were long wont
to describe the light and shade of a
picture as apart from its color. The
change is certainly a good one.

Values are a pure convention, because
they are built upon the assumption that
nature is monochromatic. They are
however, a most important convention
— one that is practically indispensable
to a painter — ^f or it is upon sound values
that pictures depend for their solidity
and their convincing power. Good
painting, after all, is a matter of analy-
sis and synthesis; and we painters are

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SO used to picking nature to pieces,
studying her in detail, considering the
undertones by themselves, for instance,
while we hold the overtones in abey-
ance, that we find no diflSculty in sepa-
rating the chiaroscuro from the color,
and temporarily assuming a color-
blindness if we have it not.
But values are a convention in still
another sense. Our ability to counter-
feit nature in a picture depends upon a
palette made up of a certain number of
dead pigments, whose scale of light and
shade is ludicrously inadequate when
compared with that of nature. Limited
thus on the material side, the best we
can do is to translate the infinite value-
scale of nature into our sadly finite scale
of pigments, and endeavor, by most
careful balance, to adjust our means to
our ends. This would be practically
impossible were it not for the kindly

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help we receive from the human imagi-
nation, which is ever ready to accept a
mere hint and build upon it a whole
world; to fill in all discrepancies; and,
given a few scratches of pen or pencil,
to construct therefrom a complete
representation of nature. How pecul-
iarly human is this mental attitude is
proved by the fact that no animal is
ever known to recognize the most real-
istic painting as anything more than
simple paint and canvas.

Contenting ourselves, however, with
our own small value-scale, as we needs
must, and assuming it to be adequate,
the most important thing to consider is
the value-fc^ of our picture. Assuming
the whole scale of values from the deep-
est black to the purest white to be repre-
sented by the number 100, the question
arises as to what proportion of this
number we shall use in the particular

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work which we are proposing to exe-
cute. In this matter the golden rule is
reserve. We lose rather than gain in
power by forcing the note, and a picture
in which the whole scale from black
to white should be employed would
be absolutely without atmosphere, and
without charm. It would indeed be a
crudity and a horror, from which we
would flee with hands on high. The
whole beauty of a canvas depends often
on the wisdom with which we make this
choice of key — ^whether our picture is
pitched in the upper, the middle, or the
lower register, and whether we use a
limited or an extended scale.

It is evident, of course, that we could
attentuate our scale to the vanishing
point, so that a breath would almost
blow the picture from the canvas; just
as by going to the other extreme we
should fatally brutalize the work.

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But within the limits of, say, the num-
ber ten and the number ninety of the
scale, there exist a dozen or more keys
of value, any one of which we are at lib-
erty to select. It is equally evident that
a picture painted in any one of these
keys would be true to nature, if the
relative values within the scale were
carefully noted and adhered to. But in
every case there would be one of those
keys which would have suited the mood
of that particular picture better than
any other, and it is in the intuitive se-
lection of just the right key that the
true artist most frequently shows his
power. As a rule, it may be said that the
upper middle range will be found best
to suit the great majority of pictures,
but there are motives whose brilliancy
calls out for the highest attainable key
of light, and others whose brooding
mystery must hide itself in the shadowy

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gloom of the lower register. Of equal
importance with this question of alti-
tude in the register is that of the numer-
ical scale — ^whether to use ten, twenty,
fifty, or seventy of the possible 100
points in the full scale. This will depend
largely upon the effect to be produced,
whether the message we have to convey
is one of dramatic power, of brilliancy,
or of tender and poetic charm. It will
depend also considerably upon the
character of the work and its ultimate
destination. In a mural decoration, for
instance, the demand for a restricted
scale of values is absolutely mandatory,
because the first consideration in a work
of this character is that the observer
must always remain conscious (or sub-
consciously conscious) of the flat sur-
face of the wall. If this plane were de-
stroyed, the architectural unity would
suffer — ^the sense of the supporting

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power and strength of the wall being
gone. In an easel picture it is jurt the
contrary; there we desire to annihilate
the flat surface of the canvas, to pro-
duce the illusion of atmosphere and to
convey the impression that it would be
possible to step over the border of the
frame and out into the fields beyond.
In this case therefore the scale of values
must be generous enough to convey the
impression of solidity and reality, while
being held sufficiently in hand to obvi-
ate the danger of crudity.

As this whole question of values is a
matter of translation^ and of delicate ad-
justment inside of fixed conventional
limits, there is practically no effect in
nature that cannot at least be suggested
by a wise and skilful use of pigments.
Take, for instance, the familiar eflfect
where the sun, high in the heavens, is
reflected in a brilliant pathway of scin-

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tillating light across the surface of the
sea. In this case it is evident that the
actual color-scale of nature is a thousand
times more powerful than that of the
artist's palette; yet by a careful selec-
tion of the register, and a wise adjust-
ment of the scale, it is quite possible
not only to render the illusion of this
radiant scene, but to do this without ex-
hausting our limited value-scale. In fact,
in this^and in all similar e£Pects in which
radiation of light is the principal motive
of the picture, it is of the utmost import-
ance to keep well within the limits of
the scale, in order that even the deepest
shadows shall remain luminous and
palpitant. Nature never exhausts her
value-scale. Even in the most violent
effects, she always holds pleniy in re-
serve. And, so far as is possible with
our limited scale, we should do the

same.

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This, of course, does not mean that we
should pamt a gray-day landscape in a
key so low that we could give its full
force to a burst of sunlight that might
suddenly strike across the scene. (If the
sunlight is to be included, it should have
been conceived as part of the picture in
the beginning, and so arranged for.)
But it does mean that we should always
be able to go a little higher on the high
note or a little lower on the low note if
it is desirable to do so.

Having decided upon the scale and
the register, the next most important
thing is so to visualize our subject that
we shall be able to group our values in
large and simple masses. See big! Grab
the essential, and leave the little things
for any foolish person who chooses to
gather them up. To tell the truth, detail
is so blatant, so insistent, that it takes
years of hard training to see beyond it,
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to appreciate the essential bigness of
things. This is particularly true of out-
door nature. The sun is a great leveller.
It flattens all masses, the lights as well
as the shadows. An out-door picture-
motive is complicated indeed if it can-
not be divided into four or five domi-
nant values. If these are understood,
and painted with sympathetic truth, it is
astonishing how little detail it requires
to complete the picture — ^the trunk of a
tree, a few scattered leaves, the curve of
a road, and the trick is turned. Always
leave something to the imagination of
the beholder. A picture is often com-
plete long before you suspect it.
There is probably no better way of
training the eye to simplicity of vision,
than studying moonlight, for in
moonlight e£Pects, the broad masses
alone are visible, and the shadows lie
all over the picture in one big soft value.
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o ^

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The lights are distributed in two or
three values at most, and nowhere is
there any detail. Try to see your day-
light effects in the same way, and you
will come far nearer the truth than you
might think.

Personally, I am inclined to hold values
to be the most important qualiiy in a
picture — and this in spite of the fact
that the work must depend for its charm
upon the other qualities of color, de-
sign, and refraction. But a picture that
is good in all these respects being weak
and unsound in values, will neverthe-
less be a poor picture. Values might be
compared to the skeleton in a human
figure, which depends for its beauty upon
the exquisite curves of the rounded limbs,
the silken sheen of the hair, and the color
of eyes and lips and blushing cheeks.
Remove the skeleton, and the whole
fabric of beauiy falls to earth a shape-

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less mass. Moreover, values are one of
the few things in art that can be learned
by almost any one who is gifted with or-
dinary eyesight; and for that particular
reason they should engage the earnest
attention of every serious student. One
who has thoroughly mastered them
has gone a long way on the road to
success in painting.

Of course, all that has here been said
refers only to the art of the past and of
the present, for it is by no means cer-
tain that the intellectual and spiritual
conditions which now bind us will en-
dure forever. When C try to draw aside
the veil, and peer into the mists of the
future, I seem to see another art, less
material, more akin to the pure spirit of
music; an art stripped of all that is
gross and material; an art in which
abstract beauty alone shall rule. In this
new art values may very possibly be

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unnecessary, and all will be stated in
terms of beautiful color.
This is not yet however; and any art
which is to endure must be true to the
spirit of its own age.

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Drawing is the grammar of art. As
grammar is the framework on which
all good literature is built, so drawing
is the foimdation of all good painting.
It is no more possible to imagine a
great picture with crude and incom-
petent drawing than it is to think of a
great sonnet whose grammar should be
uncouth and halting. Like grammar,
also, drawing is not a virtue to be ex-
tolled in a picture, but an essential to
be demanded.

Fortunately, both grammar and draw-
ing may be learned by any one of good
average intelligence. In reference to
drawing, however, this statement ap-

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plies only to that kind of good, sound,
commonplace drawing which serves to
uphold a picture in which color and
sentiment are the main things; but noU
of course, to the truly great drawing
which is beautiful in and by itself, and
which is one of the rarest qualities in
all art — so rare indeed that the great
draughtsmen of the world can be
counted upon the fingers of one hand.
Of these probably Holbein and Leo-
nardo were the most eminent examples.
In the work of these two men the sense
of refined and tender line was so ex-
quisite that we should almost prefer to
have it without color; and indeed when
color was used to secure the added
beauty of modelling, as in the ^^Mona
Lisa," it was always flat and conven-
tional. It would be impossible, for in-
stance, to imagine a Holbein painted
in the impressionist manner of the

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present day. The grace of line which
is this master*s chief distinction would
be destroyed by the modern method of
applying the pigment: and this shows
once again the futility of the frequent
demand that a single picture shall con-
tain in itself all of the manifold quali-
ties of art.
In landscape, of course, drawing is of
secondary importance; color, refrac-
tion, and vibration ranking first; but
no landscapist must imagine that for
this reason a sound knowledge of draw-
ing can be dispensed with. The char-
acter of his tree, his stream, his moun-
tain outline is as important as the
character of an eye or a mouth in a
drawing of the human face. Moreover, a
good knowledge of drawing is essential
to good workmanship. The charm of a
picture often lies in the freshness, the
brilliancy, and alacrity of the brush-
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work; and this kind of stroke can only
be secured when it is backed by a sure
knowledge of the underlying form. The
poor and uncertain draughtsman fum-
bling for form loses all " quality/'

Turn the pages of any exhibition cata-
logue, and you will find it difficult to
place your finger on the name of a
really fine landscape painter who is not
also a fine draughtsman. And I think
that inquiry will disclose the fact that
the best of them have devoted at least
four or five years pretty exclusively to
the study of drawing. This is none too
much. But the best place to acquire
this knowledge, even for a landscape
painter, is not out of doors before na-
ture; because it is so much easier to
study drawing in-doors from the nude.

In art, as in the other a£Pairs of life,
those go fastest and furthest who follow
the line of least resistance. In the open,

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therefore, our attention should be con-
centrated on the study of color, vibra-
tion, refraction, and the mystery of
atmosphere — on those qualities in fact
which can be studied nowhere else to
the same advantage. But if a class of
students in drawing should plant
themselves down in the woods, using
the oaks, the elms and the beeches
for models, their progress toward an
exact and synthetic knowledge of
form would be slow indeed. The tree
forms would permit them too much
latitude. The articulation of a limb
upon the trunk of an oak, for instance,
might start a foot higher up or a foot
lower down and still be in character,
but the articulation of a knee joint,
an elbow, or a shoulder of the human
figure must be true to the inch. In fact,
nowhere else can the sense of form be
so perfectly trained as in following the

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exquisite and subtle lines of the most
beautiful, the most perfect thing in
nature — ^the nude human figure. There-
fore, although we take it for granted
that the drawing of a landscape shall be
good, it is not in the drawing of land-
scape itself that landscape drawing can
best be learned. When the eye is once
trained to see and feel the infinite deli-
cacies of the human form, it will find
no diflBculties in any of the other forms
of nature. A landscapist should, of
course, familiarize himself with the
character of the trees, the hills, the turn
of winding streams and of hillside
roads by making frequent pencil draw-
ings from nature, but he should first of
all learn to draw.
Hence, when the student brings in
badly drawn landscape studies, the
only thing to do is to send him back to
town; or, if he happens to be a capable

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draughtsman, erring through careless-
ness, to tell him to spend more time
with the charcoal and less with the
brush. It has been suggested that in
order to keep the eye of the student
always keyed up in drawing, it might
be well to have a class in out-door figure
painting connected with every school of
landscape art. This idea gained numer-
ous adherents at the time of the wonder-
ful exhibition in New York of the Span-
ish painter, SoroUa y Bastida. Nor was
this to be wondered at; for these bril-
liant and exquisite studies of out-door
Spanish life, the figures throbbing with
vitality, and the very air palpitating
with the gay southern sunshine, might
well excite the enthusiasm of all lovers
of art; and their astounding realism,
coupled as it was with a true sense of
beauty, was the very thing that would
be sure to fascinate the younger paint-

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ers. Nevertheless nothing, in my opin-
ion, could be less intelligent than the
above suggestion. For the student who
aims to go far in art the golden rule is,
one thing at a time.
If you consider for a moment, you
will perceive that painting the figure in
the open involves a simultaneous at-
tack on nearly every problem in the
wide domain of art. You have first
of all the out-door questions of atmos-
pheric vibration and refraction, and
the consideration of the color-scale and
value-scale ; then, in addition to these,
you have practically all the in-door
problems, which include figure-compo-
sition and arrangement, in addition
to, the usual problems of drawing and
modelling — the latter presented in a
reversed and unfamiliar form, owing to
the new and unexpected color-reflec-
tions from the sky and the surround-

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ing sunlit landscape. Of course, if this
kind of study were regarded as merely
a form of dissipation, a little spree as
it were, to vary the dull monotony of
landscape routine, it might have its
good points. Change is a great tonic;
and it does no harm occasionally to
shoot arrows at the stars even if you
know that they will not carry. But
for students seriously to shoulder all
these problems at once, shows both
courage and naivete, but little discre-
tion. Did they know that SoroUa him-
self worked for twenty-five years at the
problem before he painted his first
successful out-door canvas, they would
perhaps attack it with less enthusiasm.
But courage is an admirable thing, and
it seems a shame to put obstacles in its
path.

I have said that Holbein and Leo-
nardo da Vinci were probably two of the

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greatest draughtsmen the world has
ever seen, stating at the same time that
the character of their work precluded
the possibility of really good painting
as we modems conceive it. Depending
as it does for its distinction upon
extreme delicacy and finesse of line,
free and vibrant brush-work was of
course not possible. There, fortunately,
is another and larger manner of draw-
ing which is peculiarly fitted for the
true painter's use. This is drawing
by mass, as it is seen in the work of
J. F. Millet, Winslow Homer, and the
French landscapist Harpignies. As
landscape art in its highest expression
is a synthetic grouping of masses of
delicate and beautiful color, this kind
of drawing is that which is made for
the landscape painter's special needs.
It allows full scope for the true rend-
ering of character in all the principal

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forms, and at the same time it lends it-
self to the large and noble vision — ^for,
even in drawing, the true painter must
always see big. Here, as elsewhere,
he must "grab the essential'* and cast
the little and the inessential behind
him.

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There are so many millions of good
compositions in the world that it seems
strange any one should ever waste time
on a bad one. The good ones lie about
us at every turn of the road. All
that is necessary is the eye to see them.
There are no fixed and immutable laws
of composition — at least, none that can-
not frequently be broken to advantage
by a man of genius. All of the old con-
ventional rules are explanatory rather
than constructive. They may prevent
an utterly bad arrangement, but they
can hardly enable us to create a master-
piece; for the all-essential note of per-
sonality would be absent. In my own

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opinion, about all of the rules of com-
position which are of any practical value
to a painter, are negative rather than
positive, and can best be expressed in a
series of **don'ts/*

The first and by far the most impor-
tant of these is, "don't try to say two
things on one canvas." Any motive that
is worth painting must have a central
point of interest. Concentrate on tihat
and sacrifice everything else to it. If
there chance to be another attractive
feature in the same subject, ruthlessly
suppress it, in order that the one thing
which you have to say may be said
strongly. It often happens in nature
that there are two points of nearly equal
interest in the same scene. In this case
divide the motive into two separate pic-
tures, or else paint some other motive.
If you try to paint both on the same
canvas you will fall between two stools;

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for the human mind is capable of
receiving but one impression at a time.
An instance of this double motive
which recurs constantly in nature is
the scene where some handsome land-
scape is reflected in a pool or stream,
the reflection being often more beauti-
ful than the scene which it reflects. It
would be fatal to attempt to reproduce
both in one picture. The eye of the
spectator would not know upon which
of the two pictures to rest and neither
would make its full impression.
An excellent example of the correct
way to treat this motive is to be found
in the river views of the Norwegian
Dainter, Fritz Thaulow, who never gives
more of the landscape itself than a
suggestion at the top of the picture,
thus concentrating the attention on the
beautiful swirling expanse of water be-
low. The water itself tells all that is

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needful of the thing it reflects, and the
attention is not distracted in the effort
to see two things at once.

I have seen many a poor picture in
which two very excellent pictures had
been painted upon the same canvas,
either of which would have been beau-
tiful by itself. If you wish your message
to carry, don't confuse your audience
with irrelevancies. Make your single
statement clear and forceful and con-
vincing — and let it stand by itself. Don*t
try to give too much for the money.
This is even a worse mistake in art
tiban it is in business.

Secondly. "DonH divide your picture
into spaces of equal size and propor-
tion." For some psychological reason of
which we have not the explanation, the
human mind abhors an equal division
of space in a picture. Therefore don't
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principal object of interest in the exact
centre of the canvas. How jar above or
how far below, the centre the horizon
should be placed, will of course de-
pend upon the character of the motive
and its various units. Unless there is
some very convincing reason for the
high horizon, however, all experience
points to the lower division as best.
A vast sky always lends nobility to a
picture; while the suppression or nearly
total elimination of the sky tends to
convert the canvas into a sort of tran-
scendent still-life. This is the case with
the water pictures of Thaulow. They
are the very apotheosis of still-life, it is
true, but they are held within the still-
life class by the fact that they are a
representation of near-by objects^ that
they make no appeal to the infinite —
translate no mood or effect.
The low horizon line is peculiarly es-

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senti^l when the prmeipal motive of
the picture is found in the sky itself —
some vast composition of rolling clouds,
some gorgeous sunburst radiating its
luminous streamers athwart the canvas,
some castle in the air towering up and
up to the zenith. In this case, a mere
line of land is often sufficient — enough
to give the dark and solid value that
lends light and air to the upper reaches
of the sky.
"DonH have anything in the picture
which does not explain itself.'' Because
a thing happens to exist in nature
is no reason why it should be allowed
a place in your picture — ^which is a
work of art. Treat nature with respect
and aflFection, but don't let her rule
you. And, moreover, don't paint any
motive that is so unusual and outre
that it will not explain itself without
a pamphlet attached to the frame. I

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once asked Mr. Lhermitte, the veteran
French master, what he proposed to
call an important picture which he had
just then completed for the Salon. "I
don't know/* he replied. "A picture
which needs a title should never have
been painted. What would you call it
yourself ?'* We had best not poach upon
the preserves of the story-teller, be-
cause he can always beat us at his own
game. No beauty was added to a certain
picture of the Cornish coast which I once
saw in the Royal Academy, by the fact
that it was entitled "Where the Phoe-
nicians came for tin.'*
"Don't repeat the main line of your
picture with another important line
parallel to it." If you have a mountain
form swinging up to, the left, have your
clouds swing up to the right; or tend in
that direction. If you are painting in
a flat country like Holland, and your

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horizon line is forcedly horizontal, make
this straight line beautiful by adjusting
the cloud forms to it in agreeable con-
trast. The sky is in thb respect a won-
derful resource to the painter, for its
lines may sweep in any one of an hun-
dred different directions; and they can
thus always be made to balance or
accentuate or modify the lines of the
solid earth, which cannot change.

Above all, "don't let the dominant
line of your picture end aimlessly in
mid-air.'* With the sky to help, there is
no excuse for this. It should be picked
up and carried on in a sinuous, living
line, like the sweep of a winding brook
or the curve of a mountain road. The
psychological effect of this living line
in a picture is one of the most potent,
though one of the most mysterious,
things in art.

As I have already said, however, there

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is not one of tibese rules, nor one of the
old conventional tenets, that cannot oc-
casionally be disregarded to advantage.
No! in this I am mistaken. There is
one rule at least which must never
be broken — the rule which says "thou
shalt not paint two pictures upon one
canvas**; for the house which is divided
against itself inevitably falls to the
ground.

But I have seen an excellent picture in
which the horizon line bisected the can-
vas exactly in the centre — ^the necessary
balance being achieved by other means.
I have also seen pictures in which the
repetition of the dominant line added a
strange beauty to the canvas.

"Don't crowd your composition.** Let
your tree or your mountain have breath-
ing space. Keep them away from the
edge of the frame. They will gain in
dignity and apparent bigness by di-
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minishing rather than increasing their
proportions.

"Don't put in a single unnecessary
feature/* Everything which does not
contribute to the grace, or the beauty,
or the force, or the sentiment of your
picture detracts from it.

But unquestionably the best rule of all
is to keep the eyes always wide open and
observant of the things about you, for
the most beautiful compositions in the
world are always the daring and un-
expected arrangements of nature. It
behooves us to see them.

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QUALITY

The Belgian master, Alfred Stevens,
was wont to say that a picture in order
to be truly great must excel from two
different points of view. When seen
from a distance it must be handsome in
color, fine in composition, and true to
the scene depicted; and when examined
at close range the pigment must reveal
that precious and jewel-like surface
which is described by the word "qual-
ity."

Jean Fran9ois Millet, on the contrary,
abhorred quality, and vehemently pro-
tested that any painter who concerned
himself with surface prettiness was
little better than an artisan — at best a

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jeweler out of his element. Personally,
I am inclined to think that both of
these great masters were in the wrong,
but that Millet came nearer to the truth
than Stevens. It is quite certain, at any
rate, that his instinct was correct in so
far as it applied to his own work. Pre-
ciosity of surface could only detract
from such a picture as the ** Sower'' or
the "Shepherdess/' while it would be a
positive oflFence in a picture such as
the "Man with a Hoe," Millet, of
course, was too great and true an artist
to fall into this error. His pictures give
evidence of an infallible instinct for the
eternal fitness of things, and as he was
concerned always with the thing to he
saidy he used every resource at his com-
mand to reinforce the dominant idea
of the work, suppressing every thing
which might distract the attention from
the central motive. The epic of labor

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was his message; and the coarse and
often repellent surface texture of his
pictures was in absolute harmony with
the character of his subjects. These,
while not precisely tragic, were invari-
ably sober and serious, with the large
dignity of primitive things.

But the fact that an enamel-like
beauiy of surface was not in keeping
with the art of Millet is no valid proof
that it has not a legitimate place of
its own in painting. Indeed, the whole
question of the relative value of things
in art is here involved. The time is no
longer when the figure painter can look
down upon the landscape painter, when
the painter of vast historical composi-
tions has his special place reserved for
him at the head of the board, while the
painter of mere portraits must be con-
tent with a seat below the salt. It is the
intrinsic beauty of the work itself that

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decides its value, and neither the size
of the canvas nor the character of the
subject counts. A portrait by Velasquez,
a landscape by Corot, or a tiny still-
life by Chardin may very well be worth
a dozen great figure compositions by
Le Brun or Van Loo. To withhold
praise therefore from one of the be-
wilderingly beautiful pipe-dreams of
Monticelli would be to deny the value
of all the decorative art in the world;
to say that the mere sensuous beauiy
of the flower or of the peacock's feather
has no value because it delivers no
intellectual message; to brush aside as
worthless the keramic art of Japan, the
textiles of Persia, and the cathedral
glass of the Middle Ages.
But just as we should deprecate the
presence of a precious surface quality
in one of Millet's noble and homely can-
vases, so we should resent any attempt

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at a didactic or serious message in a
picture by Monticelli or Watteau. And
herein lies the mistake of Alfred Ste-
vens. Throughout all the ages the great
masters have been content to say but
one thing upon one canvas; to subor-
dinate everything else in the picture to
the one dominant idea, and to eliminate
everything which does not contribute to
reinforce it. As I have already said in
the chapter on Composition, any at-
tempt to convey two ideas at one and
the same time leads to inevitable con-
fusion. Each idea may be beautiful in
itself, but the beauty of one will nullify
the beauty of the other. Indeed, the
fact that a secondary idea in a picture is
especially interesting is the strongest ar-
gument for its suppression. K the idea
is of sufficient beauty it deserves a can-
vas by itself, and should be reserved for
another picture to be painted later on.

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Of the works of Monticelli, Watteau^
Gaston La Touche, and their fellows,
we therefore ask n^o more than they
have given us. We are content to satu-
rate our souls in their sensuous loveli-
ness; to take deep draughts of this in-
toxicating wine of beauty and to dream
the day away. We do not say that their
work is greater or less great than that
of Millet or Winslow Homer or the
other master painters erf humanity. We
only say that it is diflFerent, and we are
glad that it is as it is and not otherwise.
In the garden of art there are many
mansions. We love to wander from one
to another under the wide and bosky
shade, and are happy that we must not
dwell always in the same palace — ^be it
ever so beautiful.

Now there is no question but that this
elusive and exquisite surface beauty —
this so-called "quality'* — is peculiarly

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^ *

S i

I "^

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QUAUTY

at home in some forms of landscape
art. Of this we have uidubitable proof
in the work of Claude and Turner and
in the pictures of our own painters,
Ranger, Dearth, and Bunce. One thing,
however, must not be lost sight of.
When the picture is intended to de-
liver a message — ^to convey some poetic
or strongly dramatic " mood '' of nature,
the unreserved use of quality may lead
to the pitfall of the double motive. But
when the character of the subject is quiet
and idyllic, the sensitive appreciation of
surface beauty on the part of the artist
and his dexterous manipulation of pig-
ment to secure it is not only legitimate
but practically mandatory. Some of the
most enduring works of beauty in
painting owe their charm almost wholly
to this one thing.

It is sometimes objected that there
are various receipts by the use of which

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quality can be secured by the first-
comer. If this were true, it would be
the greatest of boons to the artistic
profession. But, alas! the only real re-
ceipt for quality is to be bom a colorist.
The kind which is secured by simple
recourse to the varnish-pot is a sadly
spurious article, which will bring little
pleasure to any one with a sensitive
artistic organization. Quality which is
obtained at the expense of truth is
dearly bought, and varnish in itself
does not make art.

When, therefore, I am asked by stu-
dents for the best way to secure quality
in a picture, I feel inclined to para-
phrase the reply of Oliver Wendell
Holmes to the reporter who asked him
the best way to make sure of a long
life. "The best way," said the Autocrat,
**is to select long-lived parents.*'

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PIGMENTS

The question of the medium in which
the painter shall execute his pictures is
an a£Pair of temperament. Each artist
must consult his own feelings in this
matter and select the medium which is
to him the most sympathetic. To-day,
there are practically but three systems
of painting in common use, tempera
having gone out of vogue, and fresco
having very wisely been discarded in
favor of better and sounder methods.
The three remaining methods are, of
course, pastel, water-color, and oil. Each
of these has its own special advantages,
and its countervailing disadvantages.
Pastel, the most exquisite and fasci-

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nating of the three is also technically
considered the most dangerous. It has,
indeed, so many drawbacks on the ma-
terial side that only the most thoroughly
trained technician is able to avoid them
all, and thus assure to his picture the
permanence which is a first essential
in any work of art. To begin with, it is
the most fragile of materials. If a fixa-
tive is used it must be applied with a
sure knowledge of the results to be ob-
tained; for any carelessness or igno-
rance of manipulation during this deli-
cate process will result in a certain loss
of the surface bloom — the quality which
more than anything else gives to pastels
their exquisite charm. This statement
applies more particularly to the paint-
ing in which the pastel is applied as a
heavy coat over the whole surface of
the canvas, and in which, therefore, fix-
ing is an absolute necessity. When the
pastel is used meagrely, and the sur-

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plus pigment is thoroughly shaken off,
a pastel is nearly as indestructible as
any other drawing, and this without
the use of fixatives. But the worst short-
coming of pastel is its tendency to fade.
This is unnecessary and is due solely
to carelessness on the part of the man-
ufacturers. The remedy, therefore, is to
patrom'ze only the most reliable makers.
Water-color has many of the charms
of pastel, with practically no demerits.
Its permanence is amply demonstrated
by the cartoons of Raphael and Leon-
ardo, while it gives to our work an airy
delicacy that can be secured by no other
means. Its only disadvantage is also one
of its chief attractions — the element of
uncertainty always present, for the color
dries out a tone lighter than the freshly
applied wash, and of course only long
training enables one to discount with
absolutis certainty this subtle change
of tone. However, we must admit that

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its usefulness is limited to comparatively
light effects, and to pictures of moder-
ate size, as it lacks the necessary depth
and power for low-toned pictures or for
canvases of large dimensions. As the
lead factor is not present in water-color
work, almost the whole scale of pig-
ments may be used with impunity and
with reasonable certainty of perma-
nence.

But of all the methods of painting yet
discovered, painting in oil is unques-
tionably the most valuable and the
most satisfactory in its general results.
The range of its power is only limited
to the power of the pigments at our
command; and its permanence depends
only on our care in the selection of
these pigments. In this respect, how-
ever, it must be admitted that our
palette is still far from ideal.

That in this age of chemical conquest

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we should still be using the sixteenth
century colors; still be forced to pick
and choose our pigments in the con-
stant fear of chemical change, is a
pointed comment on the intelligence of
the artist fraternity. Had painters been
able to combine in a united demand,
they would long ago have had a palette
as brilliant as the rainbow and as endur-
ing as the pyramids. They ask no im-
possibility. Indeed, the solution of this
problem would be a comparatively
simple matter for the modern chemist, a
mere nothing in comparison with the
prodigies that have been wrought in
the domain of steel and in the field of
electricity. But alas! from the very
nature of things, concerted action was
impossible. The artist is a hopeless
individualist. Were he able to sink his
individuality in any merger, he would
no longer be an artist. I have in mind
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a dinner given by a benevolent lover
of art and artists, to which a dozen
prominent painters were bidden, that
they might explain their needs to an
eminent chemist who was the guest of
the evening. I shall not soon forget the
bewilderment of the man of science
at the end of the conference. In less
than an hour he had received a dozen
widely varying accounts of the needs of
the profession, each one describing the
special and individual needs of a special
painter. Moreover, the discussion was
so filled with gay and reckless persi-
flage, so shot through with wit and
repartee, that it was hopeless to attempt
to separate the light from the serious.
It was a very gay party, but it advanced
little the cause of sound color.
Jf , therefore, artists are ever to secure
the pigments which they need, the
demand must come from some alien
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source. Fortunately, this demand has
already arisen. The manufacturers of
print goods all over the worid are in-
tisting upon pigments which will re-
main permanent under the strong rays
of the tropical sun, and which will at
the same time resist the action of the
various alkalies and acids they are sure
to encounter in the wash-tub. To meet
this demand one great firm of color-
makers has a hundred expert chemists
employed upon the problem. Already
they have achieved one definite and
splendid result — ^a synthetic red which
is absolutely neutral, chemically con-
sidered, and ten times more powerful
than the best vermilion. As an artist's
color, it replaces almost all the other
red pigments which we have inherited
from the past. The same chemists have
an equally powerful yellow and blue
under careful observation, and it is
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highly probable that in another year or
two these, also, will be given to the
world. Now it is evident that if painters
can secure these three primary colors
in two values, a light and a dark shade,
they will, with the addition of white and
black, have a perfect palette; as all of
the secondary and tertiary colors, such
as orange, green, violet, and their vari-
ous derivatives can be compounded by
an admixture of these original pigments.
But while we may hope for the com-
pletion of the new color-scale, it would
be foolish prematurely to assume it as
assured. In the meantime, we must act
as if we were always to be dependent
upon the old hereditary palette. That
splendid and durable results can be
secured through its use is amply proved
by the superb examples of the old
masters which have come down to us
in a perfect state of preservation. AU

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that is required is a little care and in-
telligence in the selection of the pig-
ments. Lead is the one dangerous fac-
tor. If we were wilUng to take from
the palette the white lead and the
chromes, which have also a lead basis,
we could use almost all the other pig-
ments with impunity. But our only
substitute for white lead is zinc white,
which has the disadvantage of being
so extremely brittle when hard-dry,
that it cracks when the canvas is
rolled, or under the action of extremes
of heat and cold. The danger from
lead is its strong affinity for sulphur,
and the unfortunate fact that sulphide
of lead is a blackish brown. There-
fore when any of the colors containing
sulphur (such as vermilion and the
cadmiums) are mixed with either white
lead or the chromes, we are sure to
evolve the deadly sulphide, and there

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results a general browning or greening
of the whole picture.
The rule, then, is either to content
ourselves with zinc white, or, if white
lead is used, to cast aside the cadmiums,
vermilion, and emerald green (which,
having a copper basis, is also subject
to change when brought into contact
with sulphur). The vermilion, fortu-
nately, has now been replaced by the
new color (which has been named by its
makers Harrison red) ; and the cad-
miums are hardly necessary, as they
can be replaced by the chromes. Thus,
with either lead white or zinc white,
we have a very extended range, which
has been greatly strengthened of late
years by the addition of the two superb
and perfectly safe alizarine colors,
the scarlet and the crimson varieties.
Neither the yellow nor the green aliz-
arine can yet be claimed as perfectly

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sound and enduring ; but then neither
is essential.
Now, with this list of twenty or thirfy
pigments to select frotn, the question
arises, naturally, as to the choice we
shall make from them; for it is evident,
I think, that even the most courageous
amateur would hardly venture upon
the whole gamut at one time. In the
first place, it may be said that choice
of palette is a matter of temperament.
Each student must experiment with
the various pigments and select those
which he personally finds most sym-
pathetic. But, in general, it is best to
eliminate all the secondary or com-
pound colors, such as green, purple,
etc.; and this for two reasons: first,
because a painter secures more vibra-
tion in his work by mixing his own
secondary and tertiary tones; and,
second, because if one has a green on

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the palette, one is very apt to use that
special green, instead of searching out
the various greens (and they are in-
finite) that may enter into his picture
motive. It may also be stated as an
axiom, that the more experienced the
artist, the more limited is his palette.
The expert cannot be bothered with
useless pigments. He selects the few
that are really essential and throws
aside the rest as useless lumber. The
distinguished Swedish artist, Zorn, uses
but two colors — ^vermilion and yel-
low ochre; his two other pigments,
black and white, being the negation
of color. With this palette, simple
to the point of poverty, he neverthe-
less finds it possible to paint an im-
mense variety of landscape and figure
subjects, and I have never heard his
color criticised as being anaemic or lack-
ing in power. Many other painters

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limit themselves to five colors; and
when the palette is extended beyond
seven, it is safe to presume that one is
skirting the borders either of the ama-
teur or the student class.
So much for pigments. But now we
are confronted with another and a still
more difficult problem: that of the me-
dium in which the colors are to be
mixed. For this purpose nothing better
than pure linseed oil has ever been
discovered, and indeed nothing better
could be desired; for it combines nearly
all of the good qualities — ^transparency,
hardness, a certain flexibility when dry,
and a durability whose limits we are
as yet unable to gauge — ^the first pict-
ures ever painted in oil colors being
stiU in a good state of preservation.
Unfortunately it has now become very
difficult to obtain pure linseed oil.
Most of the oil of the world is at

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present extraetd by the oil trust, which,
in order to secure a slightly increased
output, subjects the seed under pres-
sure to a high heat, with the result
that in addition to the oil there is
pressed out of the mash a variety of
resins and essential oils, whose ulti-
mate chemical eflfect on our colors we
cannot as yet determine. Finally, the
whole output is boiled with a certain
addition of litharge to help its drying
quality, and litharge is red lead. So
here the lead equation enters into our
palette again, in spite of our best ef-
forts to exclude it. There are, however,
I believe, two color-men in the world
who, recognizing the necessity of pure
raw oil for artist's use, have recently es*
tablished plants of their own, where the
seed is pressed cold and the oil is left raw.
These firms are Bloch and Winsor &
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others of which I do not know. To
ensure entire safety and durability,
nothing but pure linseed oil should be
mixed with the colors; all cracking,
gununing, etc., being due to inequalities
in the drying period of the different
mediums used on our canvas. If any-
thing at all is mixed with the oil, the
safest and best thing in the world is
certainly pure Venice turpentine. If
kerosene is used, it should be care-
fully washed to eliminate all of the
acid which is used in refining the
crude oil. Otherwise this free acid will
attack the lead and discolor it.
In regard to varnishing, the important
thing is to allow the picture to dry
thoroughly before the varnish is ap-
plied. Six months is none too much for
this, and a year is far better. A picture
varnished before the oil is hard-dry is
certain to crack sooner or later, as the

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oil and the varnish dry at different rates
of speed. The pictures of Rubens and
Vandyke were varnished with a medium
made by exposing pure linseed oil to the
sunlight until it was quite thick. This
required a month or two to dry thor-
oughly after it was applied to the pict-
ure; but the splendid preservation and
the great brilliancy of Rubens*s pict-
ures have justified all the extra pains
and trouble incident to the method
which he employed.

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ON FRAMING PICTURES

A PiCTUBB is a convention — an illu-
sion. We take a few crude materials, a
square of canvas, some earthy pig-
ments, and by a sort of artistic legerde-
main we propose to make those ma^
terials disappear and to persuade the
spectator that he is looking through the
frame and out over the sunny landscape
beyond. If the magician is clever enough,
if he observes carefully the laws of
color, of values, and of refraction, he
may succeed fairly well. But the slight-
est thing will break the spell. A scratch
across the slqr, a little indentation, and
the illusion disappears; for the observer
has become conscious of the surface of
the canvas. The rough edge of the
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stretcher has the same disillusioning
effect, and for this reason no picture is
really complete until it is enclosed with-
in the sheltering protection of a frame.
It is necessary to separate the real from
the unreal, the hard reality of the back-
ground of burlap or of wall-paper from
the illusion of the picture.
Now the question at once arises as to
the best form for this protecting bar-
rier, the best material to use in its
construction, and the best and most
harmonious surface for its finish. Ar-
tists are all aware of the vital im-
portance of this matter. They know
that a frame can either make or mar
their picture, and they give the subject
constant thought and attention. At one
period I devoted considerable time
and study to the question and made
voyages of discovery into many strange
and untried fields.

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ON FRAMING PifcTURES

Of course I tried frames of carved
wood of various hues and varied de-
sign; I collected sea-shells and fish-nets,
poppy-stalks, ears of grain, and all
sorts of beautiful dried weeds out of
the fields, which I glued to the flat sur-
face of my frames, and gilded. I made
experiments also with textile fabrics
applied between narrow bands of
gold. At one time I cut up a superb
Turkish rug and made me a precious
frame of this exquisite material. Bar-
barous vandalism, if you will, but all
in the good cause of art. However, that
was the most disastrous frame of all.
The rug was so beautiful that the un-
fortunate picture was entirely anni-
hilated. The surface texture of the rug
was in itself so compelling that no pict-
ure could stand up against it. It was
this frame, however, which first showed
me that I was on the wrong track. All
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of my shells and nets and weeds, al-
though gilded, were oc^woZ objects, with
which the eye was familiar. The ob-
server as a consequence saw the frame
when it was essential that he should
see only the picture. The frame, I per-
ceived at last, must be something mid-
way between the real and the unreal —
conventional in form and intangible in
surface. And I re-discovered the fact,
which the old masters had discovered
so many centuries ago, that there was
no material in the whole range of nat-
ure so admirably fitted for the surface
of a frame as gold or metal leaf. Next
to the mirror, it presents the most elu-
sive of all surfaces. Semi-reflecting,
semi-solid, it is just the thing that fills
all the requirements. So I came back
home again and spent the rest of my
time in a study of the best forms and
the best tones of metal leaf to be em-
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2 =5
5 <

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ON FRAMING PICTURES

ployed. Fortunately, there is a large
range of colors at our disposal, be-
ginning with pure silver, and going
through various tints of green, yellow,
and orange gold to the deep red of
copper — ^a gamut as extended as the
most demanding painter could ask.

Here it soon became apparent that the
law of complementaries reigned su-
preme. A picture whose dominant note
was pink demanded a greenish gold
frame, a blue picture called for a tone
of pure yellow or orange gold, while a
picture whose dominant tone was gold-
en yellow could only be well clothed in
silver. Fortunately, the dominant note
of most landscapes is found in the
blue or blue-gray sky, and thus the pure
gold frame is its ideal casing. But there
are pictures— often enchanting effects
— ^which are killed by the juxtaposi-
tion of yellow gold; and these pict-

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ures are barred out of our exhibitions
by the barbaric rule which limits oK
frames to those of gold leaf. One of my
own most successful canvases, repre-
senting the interior of a birch wood in
autumn, was a solid mass of shimmer-
ing yellow foliage, relieved only by the
silvery notes of the slender and graceful
trees. I tried it, without success, in
every possible tone of gold leaf; but
finally had to come to silver. The pict-
ure, of course, was "returned with
thanks on account of the frame*'; but
it found an immediate purchaser in the
first private exhibition at which it was
seen. The price, moreover, had been
doubled as a balm to my wounded
feelings.

When it comes to the form and design
of a frame, infinite latitude is allowable,
but, in general, the law of contrast holds
good here also. A very complicated pict-

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lire which depends for its effect largely
upon some graceful and intricate de-
sign will show to best advantage in a
comparatively flat and simple frame.
A simple picture, on the contrary, which
is built up with a few broad and
powerful masses, will frequently appear
best in a rich and ornamental frame,
the very richness of design accentuating
the simple beauty of the canvas. If,
however, the value-scale of a picture
is extremely delicate, this must also
be taken into account, and the frame,
though ornamental in design, should be
in low relief, in order to harmonize
with the picture which it is to frame.
The question of the mat surface and the
burnished surface, or the proportion of
each to be allowed in a given frame,
must depend upon the special picture
under consideration, and also upon the
individual tast^ ol the painter. The
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worst frame of all, the only inexcusable
one, is the blatant, vulgar over-omate,
over- wide, over-burnished affair, which
cries out, "look at me, I cost five hun-
dred dollars, so this picture must be
worth five thousand/'

Jiao)

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XI
ON SCHOOLS

If the infant Sargent or Whistler had
been marooned with a savage tribe and
brought up beyond the furthest confines
of civilization, what would their art
have amounted to? We may presume
that they would have carved the totem
pole just a little more cleverly than
their savage mates, or have given the
idol's features a twist more of deviltry
or of intelligence. But this would have
been the limit of their performance, for
art is the child of time and of precedent.
It inherits the ages; but unless the ar-
tist comes into his inheritance, he is
helpless. At best, can he go but one
little step beyond the fathers, add one
little stone to the edifice; and in order

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to accomplish even this much, he must
know well the work of his predecessors.
If by some dreadful catastrophe all the
art of the world should suddenly be de-
stroyed and all knowledge of it blotted
from the minds of the survivors, it
would require ten thousand years for
humanity to recover the lost ground. As
an artist is dependent upon the past,, it
is evident that he must strive to see and
to study all of the past art that he can
find — ^to feed his mind constantly upon
it. In the old days when the painter was
a craftsman — a little higher than the
workers in iron or in brass, in wood, or
in the precious metals, but still in the
same category — it was customary to
apprentice lads to some well-known
master. Velasquez was thus apprenticed
at the age of thirteen, Perugino at nine,
and Andrea del Sarto at the tender age
of seven. Constantly under the master's

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Childe Hassam — "Brooklyn Bridge'

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ON SCHOOLS

eye, they learned their craft much as a
tailor's apprentice learns his trade.
When they were not grinding colors or
stretching canvas, or sweeping out the
studio, they were allowed to copy the
master's work or possibly to fill in
backgrounds for him, and they received
his instruction in return for their labors.
We do not hear of anything resembling
the modem art school until the time of
the brothers Carraci; and it thus hap-
pens that the graduates of the first
genuine school of art were the painters
of the Italian Decadence. There would
seem to be a sinister significance in this
coincidence — ^a significance which has
been a facile argument in the hands of
those who hold that schools of art exert
a pernicious influence upon the student,
destroying his individuality and his per-
sonal outlook. They forget that the
effect of the school atmosphere is a bag-

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atelle in comparison to the overwhelm-
ing influence of the private master,
whose dominant personality must have
been felt at every hour of the day for
years at a stretch. The truth is that
where an artist is bom with the three es-
sentials — ^temperament, character, and
sincerity — it is impossible to destroy the
personal note in him. Nothing can sub-
merge it. The main thing is for him
to acquire knowledge and more knowl-
edge and still more knowledge, and the
source of his information matters not
one whit.
Personally, I am convinced that the
synchronous arrival of the art school
and the Decadence of Italian art was
a mere coincidence, and that the
modern system of art instruction — ^the
great art school with its corps of in-
tructors — is a distinct improvement
over the ancient method.

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It will be readily seen and understood,
for instance, that, unless a master
chances to be exceptionally intelligent,
he will be apt to insist upon the stu-
dent's using his own palette and his
own technical methods, and this will
delay the acquisition of the personal
color-scale and the personal technic
most fitted to the individual needs of
each different student. This can be, and
often is, corrected by the outside study
and investigations of students them-
selves, but it were better that the influ-
ence had never been exerted.

On the whole it may be said that our
great schools both here and abroad are
singularly free from this defect, and
that they give to the really serious stu-
dent ample facility for a thorough
training in drawing, painting, compo-
sition, and all the fundamentals of art
as understood by the great masters of

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other times. The schools, however,
have in some respects not kept pace
with the progress of modem art, and
the student graduating from the class
has still many things to learn for and
by himself before he can put into his
work the qualities which distinguish the
art of our own times from that of the
past. My own experience of twenty-five
years ago is still very generally the ex-
perience of students leaving the schools
to-day.

I left the Ecole des Beaux Arts, after
six years of hard and conscientious
labor, and drifted down to Brittany,
fully prepared, as I believed, to paint
medal pictures for the Salon.

I gathered together a collection of
stunning subjeclts, laid them in bravely,
and set to work to develop them into
pictures, according to the rules and
standards which I had learned in Paris.

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ON SCHOOLS

I confess that I was somewhat surprised
when, at the end of a year's work, I
had not a single satisfactory canvas to
show. At the end of eighteen months I
began to suspect that something was
radically wrong, and when, at the end
of two years, I was still without a
picture worthy of the name, I became
genuinely discouraged.
About this time I was at work on an-
other hiige "Salon,'* a canvas some
twelve by eight feet in dimension, if I
remember rightly, which depicted the
interior of a birchwood in autumn, with
a single figure of a peasant girl raking
up the dead leaves. The work was
well toward completion. It was, I knew,
well drawn, sound in values, and at
least as true and delicate in color as the
average picture. It was an honest en-
deavor, at any rate, and my very best;
yet down deep in my heart I felt that it

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was a failure, like all the others. But the
heart-breaking part of it was that I could
not guess why it was a failure.

One day, as I was painting away con-
scientiously, a friend strolled by — a
Scandinavian painter for whose work I
had the most profound admiration.
After studying my eflFort for awhile he
remarked: '^Harrison, that thing of
yours is so good it is a pity it is not a
d d sight better.''

"Well, for Heaven's sake, U.," I said,
"tell me what is the matter with it."

"I am not sure that I could tell you,"
he replied, "but if you will lend me
your palette for ten minutes I might,
perhaps, be able to show you."

He selected an area of eighteen inches
in the left centre of my composition,
and in fifteen minutes had entirely
repainted it. His work, as I studied it,
did not vary in color, in tone, or in value

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from the surrounding portions of the
picture which I had painted myself;
yet it was as if a window had been
opened in the centre of the canvas.
U/s work vibrated and sparkled with
light and with atmosphere, while mine
lay flat and dead. It was also as if a
window had been opened in my own
soul. U. had shown me the secret of
atmospheric painting — ^had made clear
to me in a single lucid demonstration
the importance of vibration and re-
fraction in landscape painting. I threw
aside the canvas upon which I was
at work and started another, which I
carried through with such enthusiasm
and verve as I can never remember
having put into another work — ^using,
of course, the new knowledge which
had come to me so opportunely.
This picture really went to the Salon.
It was hung upon the line, received a

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medal, and was bought by the French
government for one of the national
museums, where, doubtless, it still
hangs.
I then and there made up my mind
that if it ever came my turn to instruct
young students I should endeavor to
teach them those things for which we
painters of the older generation had to
grope blindly for years, unaided and in
the dark — ^things which are of equal
value and importance in a picture with
good drawing, good composition, and
good color, but which, for some reason,
have never been taught in the regular
art schoob.

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The "Free Art League of America''
has recently printed an open letter, in
which it congratulates the American
people on the triumph of free art and
rejoices over the certitude that valuable
collections of old masterpieces will soon
foe brought to this country, and that
beautiful carvings, bronzes, ivories, and
antiques of all descriptions will drift
into our museums, and into private
collections all over the country. It finds
particular satisfaction in the fact that
these objects will now be at the service
of our manufacturers for use as models,
and that as a natural consequence "all
of our manufactured products in which

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design plays an important part will be
better able to compete with those of
Europe/*

We may indeed rejoice if we are at
last to come into our heritage — so long
withheld; if we may hope soon to se-
cure our fair share of the treasures of
the world. But if our only use for them
is to copy them, to use them for models,
it were better they should remain
across the water. It is certain, I think,
that America will one day have a school
of decorative art that will win the
universal admiration of the world; but
if this is ever to happen, it will be
because she has developed an art that
is wholly her own ; an art that is purely
American; an art whose symbols will
be the American flora and fauna as
seen by American eyes and felt through
the American temperament.

There is only one path by which an

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THE ARTS AND CRAFTS

individual or a nation can hope to at-
tain to eminence in art» or even in the
"arts and crafts '* — and that path al-
ways leads direct to nature. We may
study the antiques, and joy in them, and
fill our souls with their beauty, but for
our inspiration we must ever hark back
to nature and get as near her heart as
ever we can. She has a special message
of beauty for every sincere questioner,
and the message she gives to me will
di£Fer from that which she holds for you»
and the message she delivers to the
Dutchman will not be the same as that
which she gives to the Spaniard.
The decorative art of the Japanese is
nature as the Japanese see it; the deco-
rative art of the Hindoos is nature as
that strangely subtle and occult people
see it; the decorative art of the Moors
was nature as the Saracens saw it; and
the decorative art of America must be

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nature as the Americans see it. There
is no art so synthetic, so conventional,
that it does not derive from nature, and
the diflFerence between the art of
Persia and the art of Europe is the
mental and temperamental difference
between the Persian and the European.
This is the foundaticm and explana^
tion of all art, whatever period it rep-
resents, or from whatever country it
emanates, and it applies with equal
force to the decoration on a porcelain
jug or to the greatest mural painting
in the world.

Sincerity! Sincerity! that is the key to
itaU.

Of course it was comparatively easy
for the Hindoo or the Japanese or the
Persian to be sincere and naive because
the arts of other countries were un-
known to them. But our wider knowl-
edge is no handicap, no disadvantage

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to US if we only preserve our own in-
t^ity.

This we must do in absolute sin-
cerity and without any mental reserva-
tion. Even in the development of the
conventional forms, which are the basis
of all decorative art, we cannot with
safety use the rules which were in-
vented and tabulated by the older
craftsmen. We must invent our own
systems. Having analyzed our bird or
our leaf or our flower, we must select
as the groundwork of our conventional
design the particular form or tint that
appeals to us as the most beautiful or
the most graceful or fitting; and just
because we are Americans, just because
of the mental diflFerence between our-
selves and the men of other nations,
our selection would be different from
the selection made from the same basic
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Hindoo, or a Frenchman, an English-
man, or a German; and in this slight
difference at the beginning of things
lies the germ of all that is distinctive
and characteristic, and therefore of all
that is truly beautiful in art.

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MURAL PAINTING

Mural painting occupies a position
alone and by itself, midway between
the purely conventional decoration and
the realistic easel picture. It must be
suflGiciently real to tell its story; it must
not be so real as to destroy the flatness
and solidity of the surface upon which
it is painted. Mural painting, in fact,
must be considered as an adjunct of
architecture, and not as a self-depend-
ent creation. First of all, therefore, it
must be in harmony with the architect-
ural scheme of the room which it is
supposed to decorate and adorn. It
must not blatantly insist upon recogni-
tion, but must rather modestly invite

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the attention of the gaze which has at
first been occupied with the proportions
of the apartment, the hall» or the church
which it helps to beautify. It is, in fact,
applied art in the highest sense of the
term. As a mural painting must always
remain in its original position, it is pecul-
iarly dependent upon its surroundings,
and the mural painter has not only to
consider the form and position of the
space which the picture is to fill, but the
color of the surrounding walls and the
quantity and quality and direction of
the light which it will receive. In its
most important aspect, therefore, it is
the exact opposite of the easel picture;
for while the easel picture must, first
of all, be true to nature and express
nature's mood, the mural decoration
must, first of all, be true to the »chi-
tecture and express its mood. It must,
in other words, pick ud the scheme

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W. L. Metcalf— "Summer Moonlight'
By permission of the Corcoran Art Gallery

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MURAL PAINTING

where the architect dropped it, and
cany the same motive to still greater
heights of beauty. Its prst and most
important function, therefore, is purely
decorative, to fill and satisfy the eye
with a surface of graceful line and sen-
suous and beautiful color. And the
mural decorator who forgets this car-
dinal fact or is temperamentally inca-
pable of working within the prescribed
limits, should devote himself to some
other line of art. It will be seen, there-
fore, that the rigid and enforced condi-
tions under which the mural painter
works impose upon him great reserve in
his scale of color and of values. If he
were to use the full scale of either (or
anything approaching it), he would in-
evitably produce the illusion of the
easel picture, which it is essential to
avoid. His wall surface would appar-
ently disappear, and one of the chief
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architectural unities would be violated.
For the same reason a carved or gilded
frame is not allowable on any purely
mural decoration, the gold frame hav-
ing been replaced by universal consent
with a decorative border painted upon
the flat surface of the wall, thus helping
rather than hindering the sense of sup-
port and solidity that must be main-
tained at all costs. It is probable that
the more the artist is willing to limit
his scale of color, the more conventional
he makes it, the more beautiful will be
his result; and it is quite permissible to
doubt whether any of the modern highly
colored decorations have filled the first
essential of mural art so well as the
old-time tapestry with its limited scale
of gray greens, gray blues, buffs, and yel-
lows. It is quite certain at any rate
that when Puvis de Chavannes in his
decorations at the Sorbonne and the

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Panth^n cut the color-scale and the
value-scale in half, we were all con-
scious of an unaccustomed and quite
peculiar fitness of the means to the end ;
of a truth that was higher than the
truth of nature, because it was the truth
of art.

But although the color-scale of a
mural painting may be limited or atten-
uated, it must still remain true within its
limits. Even the tapestry is true so far
as it goes. The human eye would re-
pudiate scarlet grass or a grass-green
sky. The elements of the decoration
must come from nature exactly as they
do in the easel picture, the difference
being that in the latter case the painter
accepts and utilizes practically all that
nature gives him, while the mural
painter takes from^ nature only those
elements which will best subserve his
ends.

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It would, however, be absurd to assert
that because the convention of the
Gobelins, the Beauvais, and the Arras
was beautiful and soul-satisfying, it
must necessarily be the vltima thvle of
decorative art. It was simply one good
form out of hundreds, many of which
are yet to be discovered. The color-
schemes that could be utilized for this
purpose are simply unlimited in num-
ber, and when the demand arises it is
almost certain that another convention
equally beautiful, though different, will
appear right here in our own country.
The new conditions of life in this new
civilization make it impossible that our
American scheme of decoration, when it
is jQnally evolved, should be the same as
that which grew out of the life and the
conditions of mediaeval Europe.

Those of our artists who are foolishly
occupied in copying or transposing the

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beautiful art of the ancients have en-
tered a blind alley which ends against
a blank wall. Imitation is the sincerest
form of flattery, but in art it leads only

to a fall.

Until very recent years, almost all
important mural decorations were fig-
ure compositions in which land-
scape played only a minor part ; but
the trend of modem life points clearly
to a time — ^a time in the very near
future, I believe — when pure landscape
will be largely used in mural work.
We can already point to several im-
portant and eminently successful at-
tempts of this kind in the city of New
York, and there is little reason to doubt
that this number will be added to rap-
idly as the fitness of the material for
the purpose is recognized and the
beauty and decorative quality of the
result is seen and appreciated.

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XIV

ON VISION

Vision! the key to the door of art; the
power to see with the eyes of the soul!
as necessary to the artist as faith to the
true believer. We have been talking of
color, vibration, refraction, drawing,
and so on — all so much useless lumber
if a painter have not the one divine gift.
I once knew an artist who had all these
technical things at his finger tips; he
was an able draughtsman, a strong col-
orist, and the difficulties of refraction
and vibration were to him a mere
bagatelle. Yet one of his pictures was
like a man without a soul — ^a verita-
ble Frankenstein Monster of art — ^for
he lacked the artist vision.

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ON VISION

Fortunately, the true vision is not a
rare endowment. By the grace of God
many of us are bom with the sense of
beauty; and even if we are gifted with
but a tiny spark, this spark can be
fostered imtil it grows into a clear and
luminous flame whose light will trans-
form the most commonplace scene or
object into a vision of infinite love-
liness. K we look always for beauty we
shall come at last to find it in the
most unexpected places and under
many strange garbs. But the true
vision means not only the power to
see and to recognize beauty, but the
power to see it stripped of all vulgar-
ities and inessentials; the power to
see the soul of the thing and to grasp
its essential beauty. For any landscape
has a soul as well as a body. Its body
is our great rock-ribbed mother-earth
with her endless expanse of fields and

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hills, of rivers and surging seas. Its
soul is the spirit of light — of sunlight,
of moonlight, of starlight — which plays
ceaselessly across the face of the land-
scape, veiling it at night in mystery
and shadow, painting it at dawn with
the colors of the pearl-shell, and bath-
ing it at mid-day in a luminous glory.
To this and to the ambient and all-
enveloping atmosphere, with its clouds
and its mists, its rain and its veiling
haze, are due the infinite and ever-
shifting moods of nature. He who
paints the body alone may be an excel-
lent craftsman, but the true artist is
he who paints the beautiful body in-
formed and irradiated by the stiU more
lovely and fascinating spirit — ^he who
renders the mood.

The painter who lacks this greatest of
all gifts, or who, having it, faiU to
use it, might just as well scrape his

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ON VISION

palette and close his eolor-box» for his
message to humanity will not be worth
the telling.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF FEAR-
LESSNESS IN PAINTING

Be courageous. Always dare to the
limit of your knowledge and just a little
beyond. You must show conviction
yourself, if you would convince others.
One of our best painters recently assured
me that cheek was his only technical
asset. This was not true, but it was half
true.

The public loves to be dictated to in
matters of art — ^to feel that the painter
is "onto his job.*' It will pass by the
man who says '^I think," and stand
rapt every time before the picture of
the man who says "I know.** Aim to
tell the truth; but if you have to lie, lie
courageously. A courageous lie has
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FEARLESSNESS IN PAINTING

often more virtue than a timid truth.
My brother, the marine painter, was
once asked by a mutual friend to criti-
cise two marines upon which the lat-
ter was at work. He went without
enthusiasm, for the man had never at-
tempted a sea-piece in his life — and it
takes years to understand the ocean.
On his return, I asked about it. "Why it
was simply astounding,'* was the reply.
"They were false of course. But they
were so cheeky that they would convince
any one but a marine painter." When
you know that this man was color-blind,
and that he had compassed success in
spite of his handicap, you will under-
stand the kind of courage he dealt in.
Use plenty of pigment also — great
**gobs** of it. A well-furnished palette
is half the battle. Squeeze out twice as
much color as you think you can pos-
sibly need, and then use it all. Look

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at the work of our friends Redfield,
SoroUa, Foster, Schofieki, Dougherty,
Dearth, Chase — ^all the good painters.
It shows clearly that they have plenty of
paint upon their palettes. Never count
the cost of your pigments. Use them as
if they were the very dirt imder your feet.
There are difficulties enough in art
without adding another to the list. At
best (or worst) you can hardly use more
than twenty dollars* worth of pigment
on any one canvas, and that is a baga-
telle in comparison to the thousands
which you propose to ask for your pict-
ure. Paint with house paints if you
are too poor to have a generous supply
of the tube variety, but for Heaven's
sake, don't stint your palette.

When I was working in France, some

twenty years ago, one of the younger

painters asked me for a criticism on his

^' Salon." I found him at work upon

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quite a large canvas, using a palette
which was dotted with mere pin-points
of color. The picture was well arranged
and well "seen," but with that palette
of course good painting was impossible.
Carroll was a poor man. We were all
aware that his allowance was barely
suflScient to pay for the simplest of food
and Ibdging; and the cost of artist's ma^
terials must have been a serious drain
upon his slender resources. So I hesi-
tated long before asking for his color-
box. There was but one thing to do,
however; so, resolutely smothering all
compunctions, I seized upon the pre-
cious tube of madder and squeezed out
a most generous supply. Carroll jumped
nearly out of his boots.

" Good gracious ! " he exclaimed, " why
that amount would last me two weeks at
least/'

My only reply was to follow suitwith the

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cobalt, the cadmium, and the ultra-ma-
rine. In lessthantwo minutes Ihadapal-
ette as generously furnished as the most
extravagant impressionist could desire.

"Th^re, Carroll/* I said, "that is the
best criticism I can possibly give you.
Use all those pigments this morning, and
the result will be such a piece of painting
as you have never done in your life.**

It was a seemingly heartless piece of
surgery. But I felt that, like many an-
other surgical operation, it was necessary
to save life. Carroll was first of all a
painter. He could dispense with food
for a while, but he could not dispense
with the materials of his craft. Well!
the paint was out of the tubes, and
it must either be utilized or wasted. So
Carroll used it, with the result that his
picture was not only well hung, but
was sold for enough to repay the cost

of the colors fiifty-fold. Not long since
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I met him again, and he assured me
that his whole success as a painter
dated from that lesson.

But there is another form of courage
which is more important than either of
those referred to — and that is moral
courage — ^the ability to stand squarely
upon your own feet and say, "Thus do
I see the thing, and thus will I paint it."
Look at Winslow Homer and at Whis-
tler. Do you imagine for an instant that
either of these masters ever concerned
himself with the question of how any
one else saw nature ? Their pictures say,
hardily, "This is the way that / see it.'*
Stick to your own vision therefore, if
you would rise above the throng. Stand
aloof! and force the note, if possible —
your own personal note. But first of all,
be sure that you have something to say;
for an empty boast awakes only a smile,
and a bluff is soon called.

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XVI

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS SERVANT

Has it ever occurred to you to inquire
who it is that mechanically writes your
letters for you while you do the think-
ing; who plays the notes of the piano
or the violin while the musician is intent
upon the interpretation; who frequently
goes on reading the printed page when
your thoughts have wandered far away ?
It is the sub-conscious servant, the
eager helper, who performs for us daily
a thousand little unrecognized services,
saves our lives often by the rapid-
ity of his action, and watches over us
with constant care lest, by our own
thoughtlessness, we come to any harm —

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the willing assistant, without whose
tireless aid we could none of us sup-
port the strain of a single day's exist-
ence.

The human brain is divided into two
entirely separate compartments, which
might be compared to the two stories
of a mansion, in the upper of which
resides the lord and master who does
all of the planning and ordering, while
the ground floor is inhabited by the
well-trained servant, who not only
carries out the orders that are tele-
phoned down from above, but, without
any direct commands, attends to all the
mechanical details of the household,
protects the master from outside inva-
sion, and watches over his physical
needs — ^the conscious ego and the sub-
conscious servant. But if the servant is
to be a thoroughly capable and intelli-
gent assistant, he must be well and

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carefully trained; and this fact is so
well recognized that the years of our
adolescence are mainly devoted to this
object.

In order to appreciate how well the
work is carried out and how attentively
the pupil has listened to his master,
you have only to call upon him for, say,
the letters of the alphabet or the multi-
plication table. He will reel them off
for you at a rate to make the head spin.
He has charge of all the stored-up in-
formation of life; he is the guardian of
the treasures of memory, and he keeps
his treasures all pigeon-holed and tabu-
lated, and ready for the instant service
of the master — ^but upon one condition
— ^thathis services be so frequently called
upon thathis powers do not become atro-
phied through lack of use. It is not in the
simple capacity of a bookkeeper, how-
ever, that he serves us best. Having per-

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sonal charge of all our stores of knowledge
and experience, he is able to correlate
quickly, and can often hand us in a
flash the solution of a problem which
the reasoning ego might have taken
hours to reach, or might never have
been able to reach at all. There are
numerous records of cases where
mathematicians or other searchers after
truth, having labored long and fruit-
lessly to solve a certain problem, have
waked up some morning with the solu-
tion clear before them. The little sub-
conscious servant had taken the thing
up during the night and handed them
the answer in the morning. The sub-
conscious never sleeps. It is only the
reasoning part of our brains that needs
the recuperation of slumber.*
Genius is the term by which we desig-

* See the veiy remarkable book on "Sleep/' by Hon.
John Bigelow.

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nate the man or woman who is gifted
with a sub-conscious nature of unusual
power or activity; for the so-called
flashes of genius represent the beautiful
and perfect correlations and harmonies
that can only be compassed at tjx^
source of things, and without the bun-
gling interference of reasoning man. In-
stinct, intuition, and inspiration are
other words which we use to describe
this phenomenon, but they all mean the
same thing.

There is no man, probably, who has
more need of the help of this faithful
sub-conscious servant than the artist,
for so many of the mental processes of
art must be instinctive. Moreover, in
the purely mechanical sense, painters,
and especiaUy Undscape painters, are
peculiarly dependent upon a well-
trained memory. When I was a student
in Paris a certain celebrated painter

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was helpful to me in many ways and
gave me much good advice. I was in his
studio one day, a month or so after his
return from a trip in Holland. He
placed upon the easel one after another
eight finished pictures and showed me
a dozen canvases rubbed in with the
warm gray which he preferred for an
undertone. "Those also are finished/'
he said; "all that remains is to put on
the color.'* Each picture represented a
different time of day, the effects vary-
ing from high noon to midnight. The
motives had been stored carefully in
the memory and the pictures all painted
after the master's return to Paris.

It was a marvellous feat to have
carried all these varying effects simul-
taneously in the mind without con-
fusion, and I did not dissimulate my
astonishment.

"Well, num ami,*^ he said, "I dis-

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covered when I was quite a youngster
that all of the really beautiful effects,
the things which I particularly wished
to paint, would not wait my pleasure.
They were often evanescent moods that
lasted but ten minutes at most, — or they
were night scenes. So I began to make
studies from memory — one little study
every day. After five years of this train-
ing I found that I could reproduce fairly
well any scene which I had been able to
study for ten minutes; and now after
twenty-five years of practice my mem-
ory has become automatic; so that if I
fail with any of my canvases it is not
because my memory fails me but be-
cause of technical difficulties or poor
judgment in the selection of the mo-
tive. On several occasions _I have
painted effects seen from the window
of a flying train. I should advise you to
begin the same kind of study/'

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I took his advice, and after twenty-
five years of the same kind of practice
I can at least corroborate his statement
in regard to the automatic working of
the thoroughly trained memory.

But even where the effect is more last-
ing, and where a painter might have
two or three hours to work direct from
nature, I believe that the final picture
must always be painted from memory;
and I seriously question if any really
great landscape was ever wholly painted
in the open. A picture painted direct
from nature must necessarily be hasty,
ill-considered, somewhat raw, and lack-
ing in the synthetic and personal qual-
ity which is the distinguishing mark of
all great art — ^unless indeed the work
is really done from memory while the
painter is standing before nature —
which might be the case if he had had
time and opportunity to ripen his vision.

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Of course one must paint what one
sees, but one must see through the mind
as well as through the eye. I do not'
mean by this to assert that young
painters can entirely dispense with
study direct from nature, or even that
the veteran would not do well occa-
sionally to carry his easel into the open
air. The student indeed must paint for
many years direct from his subject,
must pry as closely as ever he can into
the secrets of nature; but I would have
him at the same time constantly train
the sub-conscious servant, so that when
the time comes that his services shall
be needed, he will be indeed a "good
and faithful servant/'

The wonderful synthetic charm of
Japanese art is largely due to the uni-
versal custom of the Japanese artists of
working wholly from memory. Any one
who studies their drawings of birds, of
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fishes, of animals, and of flowers would
find it hard to maintain (as I have
heard it maintained in regard to mem-
ory painting) that they thereby lose the
character of the subject. It is only when
the memory is deficient or insufficient
that this danger arises. A pretty story
illustrative of this is told of an Amer-
ican traveller who, while in Tokio, had
purchased an embroidered picture of a
waterfall which he desired to have
appropriately framed before leaving
Japan. He was directed to the work-
shop of an expert wood-carver, who
accepted the commission ; and after
consultation a design was selected
whose principal decorative motive was
the tortoise. Returning in a couple of
days, the patron found the artist at
work upon the nearly completed frame,
which was indeed a beautiful and most
artistic creation. While they talked,

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something stirred among the shavings
at the back of the bench. It was a live
turtle which had served the carver for
a model. The poor man was all blush-
ing confusion.

"The honorable gentleman will par-
don me/* he said. "I am a simple artisan.
Had I been an artist I should not have
needed the turtle here to copy from/'

One of my own most interesting and
illuminating experiences was an inter-
view which I once had with an eminent
Japanese artist. At the time of my visit
he was at work upon a large screen
of which the principal motive was a
crouching leopard ready to spring. I
watched him as with three or four long
supple sweeps of the brush he placed the
beast upon the silken background, a
marvel of sinuous and savage force.

**It is a wonder!'* I exclaimed. "How
do you do it?'*

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Bruce Crane — " November Hills "
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Old smiled.

"In Nippon," he said, "we do not
study art in the American way. We
don't sit down before a thing and copy
it. The master takes his pupils to the
cage of the tiger, and he say : * Look at
the tiger's leg and the shape of his paws;
look at his eyes and the way his ears
lie back upon the head; look at his
long body and his sweeping tail; see
how he crouches as he walks.' Then we
go home and each one makes a draw-
ing, and the master say all those draw-
ings very bad. And the next day we go
again to the cage of the tiger and look
at the things we do not remember; and
we go again the next day, and maybe we
go every day for one month, two month,
three month — ^but in the end we know
that tiger." And he certainly did know
his tiger.

To the figure painter, of course, and

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especially to the painter of in-door sub-
jects, who can control his effect and
can place his model day after day in the
same light, the advantage of memory
painting may not be so apparent; yet
even here I maintain that its more fre-
quent use would be of greater advan-
tage than is appreciated at the first
blush; and this because the psychology
of art is universal in its application, and
true synthetic beauty is not within the
reach of the mere copyist — ^be he ever
so brilliant a workman.
It is said that Rembrandt often worked
upon his pictures from memory, and
report has it that Velasquez preferred
to paint with his sitter in the next room.
In regard to the greatest of all modern
figure painters, and one of the greatest
of all times, Jean Fran9ois Millet, we
have living witnesses to the fact that he
never worked from nature.

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Now if this is held to be bad and dan-
gerous counsel to give to students, I
would simply remark that a student is a
potential master, that he has the right
to all the knowledge there is in the
world, and that he must be presumed
to have sufficient discretion to apply it
wisely to his own needs. Coddling never
developed a strong man.

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TEMPERAMENT

A TALENTED young painter, who was
just beginning to make his mark, drifted
into my studio one day and threw him-
self into a chair in gloomy silence. He
smoked morosely for five minutes, while
I went on with my painting. Finally he
broke the silence. "Have I told you,'* he
said, "that I mean to give up art, to
quit the whole bally business? Well! it
is a fact. I have had the offer of an ex-
cellent berth in my father's office, and I
am going to accept it."

"Why! why!" I cried, "what is aU
this coil?"

"That is precisely what I am unable
to explain," he replied. "I have simply

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lost my grip. I have forgotten how to
paint, and that is all there is to it. I am
in first-class shape physically and my
brain-box doesn't show any unusual
cracks; but for the past two months my
work has been going from bad to worse.
Every canvas is just a little more like
punk than the preceding one. At first I
gritted my teeth and worked all the
harder; but the harder I worked the
worse my things became. It's no use. I
throw up the sponge."

I dropped my palette and grasped him
by the hand with an enthusiasm which
must have appeared to him somewhat
misplaced. **My dear fellow," I cried,
"I congratulate you. K your pictures
had not already shown you the consum-
mate painter, you have just given the
most incontrovertible proof of the fact.
You are simply soaked in temperament.
Get down on your knees, my boy, and

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thank your luclgr stars for that. If the
pendulum has swung unconscionably
low at present, you may rest assured that
it will swing all the higher on the return
stroke. The only man who never doubts
himself » who plugs stolidly on to his
goal, deviating neither to right nor to
left, is the man who is bom wholly with-
out temperament. If he never falls to
any depths of despair, neither does he
rise to any heights of gloiy; and if he
is never supremely miserable, on the
other hand he is never supremely happy.
He is simply the good, honest bromide;
the very salt of the earth, if you will,
and its balance-wheel; but never by any
conceivable possibility could he be an
artist. Your present depression is simply
the price that you pay for the immense
joy which is yours during the full tide of
creative production. So take yoiur medi-
cine like a man. Also take a drink if you

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need it, but let us hear no more of this
drivel about giving up art."
As artists grow older, and after a dozen
repetitions of the same experience, they
come to regard this recurrent waxing
and waning of the divine flame as a
normal condition of their being; and
presently they recognize the fits of de-
pression as periods of incubation, out of
which they are apt to emerge with added
strength, with some new light on diflB-
cult problems that have long harassed
them. They also discover that these oflF
times can be very profitably employed
in many ways — in absorbing the great
literature of the world for instance, a
pleasure for which they have scant
leisure at other times; in studying the
great masters of painting and delving
after the secret of their greatness; and
last, but not least, in simple physical
relaxation and recuperation— tramps

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across the hills or bouts on the golf-links
— the eye always open and the mind
passively but delightfully receptive.

One of our very greatest painters, who
is now gone, never learned this impor-
tant lesson. When the flame burned low,
and work lagged, he drank coflFee to
stimulate his tired nerves. When even
this failed to rouse the exhausted ener-
gies he had recourse to alcohol, and
when finally the great work was com-
pleted the painter was often launched
upon a spree of a fortnight's duration. It
thus happens that a man who tempera-
mentally disliked alcohol, who was nor-
mally one of the gentlest and soberest of
men, has gone down in history as a
roysterer and a dipsomaniac. He burned
himself out before his time; but in thus
recklessly using up his vital energies, he
produced a series of wonderful pictures
that will remain for all time one of the

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chief glories of our day. In the final
summing up, when reputations are re-
sorted and re-classed, he will be given
his true place; and it will be the place
of a great if a mistaken hero.

But most of us have now grown wiser.
In either literature or art it is no longer
considered necessary unduly to burn the
midnight oil or to wear the hair long.
And when the inevitable fits of temper-
amental depression are upon us we have
learned that the only thing to do is to
keep a level head, to see things in their
true proportions, and to trust in the
Lord — ^to be a philosopher, in a word.
I do not mean a philosopher of the cold
and aristocratic Nietzsche type, nor a
pessimist like Schopenhauer, but a gen-
ial, sane, and whole-souled optimist like
Socrates. All true philosophers are lev-
ellers — ^levellers up as well as down. A
condition of affairs which might loom

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portentous and threatening to the man
in the street, such an one would receive
with a smile of gentle humor, for he
would see through the disguise and
know it as a harmless humbug; while
something else which to the ordinary
mortal might appear a mere triviality
he would lift gravely into a place of
high honor, divining its fundamental
seriousness and importance.

These regularly recurring fits of de-
pression seem to depend in no wise upon
the state of the bodily health. In Robert
Louis Stevenson and Theodore Robin-
son we have examples of wonderful
temperamental resilience coupled with
wretched physical condition.

In fact, as a noted painter once said to
me, "These semi-invalids neither need
nor deserve our commiseration, for in
reality the beggars have the advantage
of us. Their nerves are always sensitive

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and keyed to pitch, while we husky
chaps have to flog ours up to the point.
We must dig painfully through, the
outer layers of flesh and muscle before
we can get at the spirit, while the in-
valids are all spirit. Personally, I know
that my best work is always done the
morning after a spree, when I come to
the studio a bit shaky and with the
nerves all on edge.*'
Although this highly immoral state-
ment was evidently made largely with
a view to picturesque effect, it did,
nevertheless, enunciate a truth that has
generally escaped attention; for it is
quite true that (given suflSicient strength
to drag the body about) physical weak-
ness is not an insuperable bar to success
in art. Very frail men and very frail
women have achieved distinction in
various artistic callings. This, however,
applies more particularly to the seden-

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tary arts, such as writing, musical com-
position, and certain lines of craftswork:
for the painter, and especially the land-
scape painter, must sometimes cover
miles with his legs in the course of his
day^s work. We all know also that a
robust physique is essential to success
on the operatic stage.
Nor do the spells of depression of
which we are speaking appear to derive
in any way from the dominating and
conscious portion of our brains — ^the
part which imder great physical or emo-
tional strain sometimes loses its balance;
for there are cases of artists who have
become insane and have still remained
great artists. A noted example of this
kind was the Spaniard Goya. The char-
acter of his subjects was affected by his
loss of mental control, naturally. They
became ghastly and often incoherent.
This was what might have been ex«

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pected. But the fundamental tempera-
mental quality of his art remained great
to the end. The temperamental man,
dwelling deep down below the surface,
had not been affected by the storm
which had played havoc with the sur-
face nature.

We are therefore forced irresistibly to
the conclusion that temperament re-
sides in the emotional, in other words,
in the sub-conscious nature of man.
When the temperamental energy gives
out, and the artist loses his grip, the
strong probability is that he has, with-
out knowing it, overworked the sub-
conscious servant; and if this ever-
faithful helper fails to respond to the
demands made upon him, it is through
no unwillingness to serve the master, but
because of utter exhaustion and inability
to react.

K therefore we regard these periods

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of temperamental depression as incom-
prehensible, it is because we have come
to look upon the conscious, reasoning
part of our intelligence as the sole source
of mental energy, whereas it is only one
factor in the complicated organism
which we know as the human ego. If
we cared to push still further our re-
searches along this same line, we might
claim that above and beyond both the
conscious and the sub-conscious natures
of man lives the animating and con-
trolling essence from which both must
draw their power, and which, for lack
of a better nomenclature, we call the
human soul. But this is the job of the
psychologist, not of the artist.

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CHARACTER

If you should ask a dozen painters
what mental qualification was most
essential to an artist's success, the
chances are that every man of them
would reply "temperament'' — in other
words, genius and imagination. Trans-
posed, these terms all mean the same
thing — ^a peculiarly sensitive sub-con-
scious organization — one that is at once
keenly alive to beauty, and capable of
that rapid and intuitive coordination of
impressions whose visible and tangible
result is the work of genius. And in
a way the painters would be right; for
without temperament no man can be
an artist; but temperament alone will

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not suflSce. If I were myself asked to
supply a formula for the making of an
artist, my receipt would be, one part
genius and nine parts hard work. I
sometimes glance back to my student
days and wonder what has become of
all the clever and brilliant chaps over
whose easels the rest of us were used to
hang in awe and admiration. One by
one they have all dropped out. Things
came too easy to them. They were not
obliged to "plug** and "grind," and so
they never learned their trade. Their
places have been taken by others — ^the
plodders who stuck to their studies
throughout the whole week with grim
determination, dropping their brushes
only at the stroke of twelve on Saturday.
One ugly duckling in particular I re-
member well. His work was so hope-
less that the whole Latin Quarter was
sincerely sorry for him. Finally his

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master in despair urged him to give
up art and go into the grocery line.
That man is at present one of the
most famous artists of the day — ^a
truly great painter. Down deep in his
nature, of course, he had temperament.
He could not have achieved his distin-
guished place in art without it. But he
also had character; character, which
means the ability to work when it
would be easier to play; the ability to
say "No,** when it would be far easier
to say "Yes''; the ability to stand out
in the sun and sweat over a study when
it would be so much pleasanter to lie
in the shade and read a book; the abil-
ity to live on a dollar a week and be con-
tent; the ability to surrender all of the
little present pleasures of life, in order
one day to achieve that greater pleasure
which comes with success in one's
chosen profession.

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I met recently a schoolboy companion
who as a man has won an enviable posi-
tion in life. He told me that at one time
he was a cub engineer in the employ of
Andrew Carnegie. An important part of
one of the important machines having
broken, he was detailed to secure a
duplicate fitting, with stringent orders
to return with the missing part before
nightfall. He hustled oflf with the deter-
mination to make a record, and scoured
both Pittsburg and Allegheny City
without result. He then telephoned to
Cincinnati, Cleveland and Louisville
with no better success. Finally he called
up New York; and there at last got on
the track of the much wanted cam. He
could have caught a late afternoon
train and been back in the morning,
but, all things considered, he thought
it would be best to report at head-
quarters, and then take the midnight
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express if ordered to do so. He was
pretty proud of himself on the whole,
and did not mind having missed his
dinner. Seeking out Mr. Carnegie he
started in to tell him all that he had
done in his strenuous day. The iron-
master interrupted him brusquely.

"Young man," he said, "I care no-
thing for explanations. I demand re-
sults. I will give you another twenty-
four hours. If by that time you have
not procured the cam, you leave the
works."

My friend left the iron master's pres-
ence somewhat crestfallen; but he then
and there made up his mind to demand
as much of himself in future as was
now demanded of him. He never failed
again in a serious undertaking; and he
rose to be one of the chief steel experts
of the country, with an income any-
where from $50,000 to $100,000 a year.

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Now if that kind of character and de-
termination are necessary to success in
business life, they are infinitely more
necessary to an artist. He has no task-
master to hold him to his job. He is the
slave of no factory bell or whistle. No
desk or office calls him daily at 9 A. m.
He is as free as the air to come and go
as he likes, and when he likes. He can
work as little or as much as he pleases.
He can loaf at his own sweet will. And
for this very reason, he is in honor
bound to work, and to work hard and
seriously. It is a case of noblesse oblige.

Moreover, it is a case of necessity. If
you would "arrive," you must work
always to the limit of your force — and
just a little beyond. It is not all cakes
and ale. There is no especial fun for
instance in grinding away month after
month, and year after year, at drawing,
which is not your forte; in cramming

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up on values, refraction and other
technical things which are not always
remarkably interesting, but which you
must have at your finger-ends before
you can "let yourself go/' And even
when you have reached that happy
stage, the necessity for hard and un-
remitting labor has not ceased. Saigent
will tell you that he has frequently
scraped out a single head twenty times.
For the optimistic student who looks
forward to the happy time when the
necessity for hard work shall be ended
there is inscribed over the portals of
the palace of art this special motto:
"All hope abandon ye who enter here."
A young painter once stood behind
the veteran Jules Breton, while he was
at work upon one of his important
pictures — ^his favorite subject of little
maids in their white commimion robes.
It was delightful to observe the ease

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and dexterity of his every stroke. The
youth spoke enviously of the joy it
must be to have attained to his per-
fect facility of technic and to know
every time a picture was begun that it
could be carried through easily to a suc-
cessful end.

"My dear boy/* was the reply, **you
will never reach that happy land here
below. I sweat blood over every one of
my pictures, and there is never a one
that is not at some time a failure, fivery
new picture brings a new problem, and
who knows if we may be able to solve
it. But if there were no new problems
we should all cease painting; for there
would be no more art/'

The true artist, after all, is greedy
for work. He needs no spur to goad
him to his best endeavor. The danger
lies upon the other side. Cazin used to
say, "An artist has no time to care for

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his health." And this is literally true;
for the conditions of artistic creation
often demand that a painter or a sculp-
tor shall frequently work far beyond the
limits of his strength during a long
period — shall draw heavy drafts upon
the future; and these drafts must either
be paid by a shortened life, or made up
later by prolonged periods of rest. As
it is not possible for the artist to work
as other men work, a given number of
hours each day, this hardest of all
workers frequently gains the reputation
of being an idler.

I cannot think, however, that erratic
hours are either necessary or excusable
in the routine of student life. The stu-
dent's business is to learn all he can —
to train the sub-conscious servant to be
the valuable helper that he must needs
be later on; and this can be done day by
day with as much adherence to regular

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hours as the business man demands of
his assistants. Moreover, the habit thus
acquired will tend to reduce to a mini-
mum the irregularity which to a certain
extent is inevitable later on. Let the
student who feels within his soul the
divine fire of genius beware of pitfalls.
If he is wise, he will bottle up that fire
for future use, and in the meantime
apply himself (like the diligent appren-
tice) to the acquisition of knowledge.

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WHAT IS A GOOD PICTURE ?

In reply to the above question almost
any painter would reply "mine own";
and if the particular painter to whom
the question is put chances to be gifted
with sufficient temperament, backed by
a sufficient training, his claim might
very well be justified. But there is an
equal chance that his judgment would
be at fault in the matter, for artists
are notoriously the poorest judges of
their own work. All painters willingly
concede the correctness of this state-
ment as applied to their brother ar-
tists, but there are few, indeed, who
will admit its justice when applied to
themselves. If this were otherwise the

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rule which has for years made the ex-
hibitions of the National Academy of
Design the poorest of their kind in the
United States — ^that provision which ex-
empts from the action of the jury certain
pictures entered by Academicians and
Associates — ^would long since have been
abrogated; for, just as no man willingly
or wittingly writes himself down an
ass, so no painter would wittingly brand
himself a duflFer. In spite of this pe-
culiar personal blindness (which seems
to be incidental to the artistic tempera-
ment) when it comes to the work of
other artists, painters are the best judges
of painting. Of course due allowance
must be made for personal idiosyn-
crasy and variation of taste. In art, as
in music or gastronomy, taste varies
infinitely according to individual tem-
perament, or training. But just as a wise
gourmet, to whose palate terrapin makes

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no special appeal, would not, for that
only reason, deny it a place upon the bill
of fare, so no sensible painter would
deny the artistic value of a Japanese
print or a Persian rug simply because
he does not happen to make that brand
of art. Indeed, if there is any one rule
for the judgment of works of art whose
application is universal, it is that which
demands of a picture, a print or a
keramic that it shall differ from all
other work in the same line, that it shall
bear the impress not only of race but of
individual personality within the racial
limits. For it is the personality which
makes the art. Nature, however beau-
tiful, is not art. Art is natural beauty
interpreted through human tempera-
ment.

Here, then, we have at least one in-
fallible test, which can be applied to
any work under discussion — ^that it

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shall be clearly and strongly stamped
with the personality of its maker, so
that we may know without asking that
a drawing is by Hokusai, or a painting
by Velasquez, Whistler, or Winslow
Homer. And originality thus expressed
is only another word for sincerity.
Sincerity used in this sense, however,
is far from meaning a slavish or me-
chanical copy of nature. The highest
form of sincerity is truth to the artist's
own personal vision of beauty.
All true art is the direct result of anal-
ysis and sjmthesis on the part of the
artist — ^whether instinctive, or accom-
plished with a clear conception of the
work to be done. Having analyzed nat-
ure's suggestive motive, the artist is at
liberty in the synthetic building up of
his work to use as many or as few of the
elements as his personal sense of
beauty tells him will be necessary to

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the work in hand. He can employ
the whole scale or he can reduce his
choice to the few conventional symbols
used in a beautiful Persian rug; the
only imperative law being that he shall
go direct to nature for his inspiration;
the inevitable penalty of failure in this
respect being the limbo of the imitator
— ^the loss of all freshness, spontaneity,
and personality. With this one restric-
tion the artist's latitude is practically
unlimited, for in a general sense art is
any object made by man which is con-
ceded by his fellow-man to be beautiful.
In regard to the picture, it is difficult
to foresee at present just how far the
average cultivated person will follow
the artist into the region of pure sym-
bolism; how few of the elements he will
demand, and how much his own im-
agination will supply. When we remem-
het that less than a generation ago the

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work of Corot and of Millet was near-
ly incomprehensible to the cultivated
French public; that even the artist juries
refused it admission to the Salon; that
twenty years since those who freely ac-
cepted the work of Monet and Sisley
were few indeed, we may confidently
look forward to a time when only the
most essential symbols of beauty will
be required of the artist. But what
exact direction this synthetic develop-
ment will take we can only conjecture at
the present time. Whether Matisse and
his followers in France to-day are the
true prophets crying in the wilder-
ness the future alone can demonstrate.
If this group finally makes good it will
be because they have discovered some-
thing which is fundamentally true and
human, something which is sincerely (if
blindly) desired by the race at large. It
is quite certain that no abnormality

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masquerading under the name of the
*^art of the future" will win a perma-
nent place in the regards of humanity.
The beauty which is to endure must be
sane and wholesome, because the human
race is sound at heart and can be
counted upon in the long run to reject
anything which is essentially unhealthy
or decadent.

In the meantime all our aesthetic ex-
perience points to the fact that the new
beauty does not destroy our love or
appreciation of the old. A picture by
Rembrandt or Velasquez meets to-day
with as much admiration as if the
"luminarist" or the "symbolist" school
had not arisen. A thing that is once
truly beautiful is always beautiful; and
the painters of to-day can remain calmly
confident that if they are true to their
own ideals and to the spirit of their
times, their output will be accorded the

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same meed of praise by future genera-
tions that we to-day give to the work of
the old masters.

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When instantaneous photography was
first discovered, some thirty years ago,
high hopes of it were entertained by
the artists. It was thought, for instance,
that it would prove of inestimable value
to such painters as Meissonier and
Schreyer, men who delighted to portray
the horse in violent action. But to the
surprise of everybody these great ex-
pectations were not fulfilled/ At first,
the artists themselves were puzzled to
account for this and to explain why the
curiously contorted attitudes now dis-
closed for the first time, conveyed so
little the impression of motion. But
when the instantaneous photographs

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were subjected to a process of selec-
tion and elimination, it was finally dis-
covered that there were practically but
two instants in the stride of the gallop-
ing horse that conveyed any idea of
rapid flight to the human eye. The first
of these was at the very beginning of
the stride, when, with all four legs
bunched together under the belly, the
animal was preparing for the forward
leap; and the second was at the end of
the impulse, when, with legs out-
stretched to the limit, the horse was
ready to take the ground again for
another stride. Both of these periods,
it will be seen, were the instants of
arrest of motion — indtants when the hu-
man eye could readily seize the action
without the intervention of the kodak.
Then at last was perceived the fimda-
mental law which underlay the phe-
nomenon: the human eye, and the hu-

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man brain behind it, declined to accept
as a symbol of motion anything which
the eye had not been able to see for and
by itself unaided. In this case, of course,
it was only during the two instants of
arrest of motion that the eye had been
able to note the position of the horse's
limbs. And these two positions of com-
parative inaction had, through long as-
sociation, become the permanent and
fixed £fymbols of action in the racing
horse. The kodak had revealed hitherto
unsuspected facts and aspects of mo-
tion, but the eye would have none of
them, and clung only to that which was
visual.
It was this experience with the earliest
kodaks which finally made plain the
reason why, from time out of mind, ar-
tists desiring to convey the concept of
motion had instinctively chosen the end
or the beginning of the stroke or im-

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pulse — ^Ihe axe poised in mid-air ready
for its downward sweep, or the stroke
completed in the heart of the tree — ^the
lifting wave poised for the fall, or the
breaker that has crashed to its turbulent
end upon the beach. Shortly also, it
began to be seen that the marine
painter who depended upon the kodak
for his drawing, lost all sense of motion
in the waves, that the wind-blown
drapery of a photograph was nearly as
rigid as a sheet of crumpled tin; that
the impression, in fact, which the eye
received from nature was not that which
was rendered by the camera; and that,
therefore, the human brain could never
accept the photograph as a thoroughly
satisfactory transcript of nature.
It is to be feared that the hopes which
are at present being built upon color-
photography are doomed to like disap-
pointment — ^for the simple reason that
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the photographic lens in no way resem-
bles the lens of the human eye. The
very fact that it is a more perfect instru-
ment is against it. It gives us scientific
facts; and scientific facts are generally
artistic lies. Art has nothing to do with
things as they are, but only with things
as they appear to be, with the visual not
the actual, with impressions, not with
realities. It is a scientific fact, for in-
stance, that trees are green, and yet it
is only under the rarest combination of
favoring circumstances that a tree is
really green to the visual sense. It is
much more likely to be pearly-gray or
royal-purple or rich amber or sapphire-
blue, according as it happens to be seen
imder the pale eflfulgence of dawn, the
shimmering blaze of noonday, the gold-
en glow of sunset or the azure mystery
of night. And it is the same with every
other landscape feature under the great

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blue arch of heaven. Each rock, each
tree, each waving field of grain has, of
course, its fixed and definite local color,
but the appearance of each of these ob-
jects changes a thousand times a day.
And it is with this equation — ^this fleet-
ing, intangible, ever-shifting, ever-vary-
ing appearance, that artists have to do.
The facts of nature are to him nothing,
the mood everything.
By an ironical chance he has it in his
power to convince the most uncom-
promising and unimaginative scientific
purist of the truth of his statement that
the most unquestionable facts of science
are often the most shameless of visual
lies — ^and this by the simplest sort of a
scierUific demonstration. In the dia-
gram on page 213, two upright lines of
equal length are traced side by side,
and near enough together to allow of
easy visual comparison. To No. 1 have

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been affixed at top and bottom a pair of
divergent wings extending upward and
downward away from the centre. To
No. 2 the same wings have been affixed.

Na X.

Na m.

but their direction has been reversed so
that they extend toward the centre of
the diagram instead of away from it.
Now no amount of didactic statement
will convince the human eye that those
two central lines are of the same length.
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Here the scientific fact has become a
visual lie. If an artist should by any
chance be using these two forms as
units in a decorative frieze wherein it
was essential that they should be of the
same length, he would unhesitatingly
lengthen the central line of No. 2 and
shorten that of No. 1, so that visually
they would become equal; and in so
doing he would be telling the truth in
his own way; whereas had he allowed
the foot-rule to control him he would
have been guilty of an artistic lie.

The Greek architects, observing that
the horizontal architrave surmounting
the columns on their temples appeared
to sag, corrected the fault by giving
their architrave a slightly upward arch,
thus by means of a curve securing a
straight line; or at least a line which was
architecturally and visually straight.

Here then clearly lies the division line

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between science and art — ^the one^ gives
us actual truths, the other visual truths;
the one facts, the other moods, impres-
sions, visions; each in its place admi-
rable, each ministering to one of the two
great needs of humanity, the physical
and the spiritual. If only a pact could
be signed between them, by the terms of
which each should agree to abide peace-
ably within the bounds of its own legiti-
mate sphere, all would be well. But alas!
science is a conscienceless freebooter.
So much the sturdier of the two, he
encroaches constantly on the domain of
art; insists on recognition where he has
no right to a hearing, and monopolizes
the) whole front of the stage. Even the
artists are unable to escape his impor-
tunities; and the younger ones especi-
ally are often misled and lured to a
false allegiance.
This is small wonder of course^ when

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you remember that ever since the day
of our birth we have been storing our
minds with thousands upon thousands
of facts — ^very useful facts, too, in their
way, facts whose possession and im-
conscious daily use are essential to our
very physical existence. But when, as
artists, we go into the open, to study
and to dream, they rise before us like a
miasma, a deadly cloud that obscures
the whole face of nature; so that we see
the landscape not as it is, but as we
have been taught in some former stage
of existence that it should be.
Among the facts that have thus been
clamped upon us there are two alas!
which have been learned by everybody
— ^that trees are green and that the sky
is blue. It matters not that the sky is
often pale green, or violet, or pearl-gray
or opal, bltie it is painted forever and
forever; and the trees are painted green

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And these blue and green monstrosities
not only find a ready sale but much
loving appreciation. There are in the
world so many others who as children
learned that the sky was blue and the
trees were green and have never since
opened their eyes. To tell the truth, so
strong is the hold upon us of these
early traditions that it takes many years
of the severest training to overcome
them. In many cases, and not infre-
quently in the case of some truly great
painter, the fifty-year mark is chalked
up against him before the scales fall
utterly from his eyes and he is able at
length to look out straight before him
with a vision that is clear and unob-
scured. Take my word for it, technique
is not the difficult thing in art. Any
reasonably capable youth can readily
master all of the technical problems in
existence in a few short months, but it

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requires many a long and weary year
to learn to see.

And to think that but for those stored-
up facts it would all have been so easy.
If pain|;ers, gazing upon nature, could
only look forth with the simplicity of a
new-bom child, which opens its eyes
for the first time on a fresh and virgin
world, the principal problem of art
would be solved in an instant. Give us,
Oh, Lord! to see! and we will find the
means of expression.

It is a simple platitude to say that an
artist can always paint as much as he
sees. All of the fumbling, and struggle,
and hard work connected with a pict-
ure comes of the effort to see just a
little more, just a little better. Tech-
nique truly is mwe child's play. It is a
question, moreover, if too much tech-
nique is not a serious handicap to any
artist — ^if indeed it does not tend to

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d^ade him to the level of the mere
handcraltsman. At any rate. Millet's
previously quoted saying to the eflfect
that technique should never open shop
for itself, that it should always hide
modestly behind the idea to be ex-
pressed is one of the eternal truths of
art. In the work of his own great period
the technique is so rough as to prove
conclusively his personal contempt for
mere surface quality. And this crudity
must have been voluntary. We may go
even further and say that it was intenr
tional; for in his own brilliant youth
there were none so clever, none so hd-
bile as he.

In the case of our own Winslow Homer
also, the thing to be said is often so
vital, the vision so clear-cut, that al-
though the paint is simply flung at the
canvas, we don*t care a fig. The mood
has been rendered — ^the message has

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carried, and we do not stop to consider
the phraseology.

But, as I have before intimated, each
painter must look at all times out of
his own eyes, and not through the eyes
of his brother. In fact, in the modern
scheme of things, the artist is the last
rank individualist to survive. For him
the merger and the combination spell
ruin. Again we insist, and insist yet
once again, that the very essence and
marrow of art is personality. Any sur-
render of personality, therefore, can
lead only to one goal — ^the abyss of
artistic worthlessness.

Under these circumstances it becomes
interesting to inquire just how much
the young painter may accept with
safety from his master; in what manner
he may best acquire the thorough and
intimate knowledge of technique which
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sacrifice of that personal integrity which
is still more essential. Let us at once
concede the fact that there is no perfect
system of art instruction. But without
question the system most nearly ap-
proaching the ideal is that which has
the great art school or institute for its
central idea. To begin with, students
learn much more from each other than
they do from their masters. The con-
stant attrition and stimulation, the
wholesome emulation of the school
keeps every mental fibre on the full
jump, every nerve alive and tingling.
The progress made by each helps the
other forward. The student sees here
a technical point, there a trick or an
idea, and, like the young barbarian
that he is, he promptly appropriates
them all to his own use. And this is
just so much to the good, for the cal-
low cub is putting on technique much
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as a young animal puts on flesh. The
system has only one serious draw-
back. The tendency of all schools is to
develop a school. This is bad, because
the whole intent of art training should
be to develop individual artists, each
differing from the other to the full
breadth and extent of personal tem-
perament. This danger, it is true, arises
only toward the end of the school period
when the youths' eyes are at last open
and they are beginning to " take notice"
of things about them. But it is neverthe-
less a very genuine and menacing dan-
ger, which is to be guarded against and
combated in every way possible.
When in the course of human events
it came my own turn to fulfil the uni-
versal duty of the older to the younger
generation, I had this danger writ large
before me. One day there came the in-
evitable little deputation of students,

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asking if the master would kindly con«
sent to paint a study before the class,
"just to show the way he would go
about it" to obtain this effect or that.
My reply, I remember, was somewhat
brusque. "Not on your life,'* I said. "I
will tell you all that I know of the fun-
damental principles which underlie all
good art, and which are everywhere
and eternally the same. I will tell you
also as much as I personally know of
the infinite variety of technical meth-
ods which abound in oil painting,
and from which it is yours to select
at will such as may best suit the 'tem-
perament or the personal point of view
of each of your number. But I will
never do you the imkind service of
putting you in the way to imitate a
technique which, though serviceable to
me personally, could no more fit your
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of mine fit your bodies. Remember that
art is nature as the artist sees it, and it
is no more possible for two human
beings to see nature in the same way
than for the same two people to have
exactly similar features. As our brains
vary, so does our point of view. Cling
desperately to your own vision, there-
fore. Accept no advice, take no criticism
that does not harmonize with it. In this
way only can you hope to be original.
Turn the mind to nature like a mirror
and let it reflect exactly what is thrown
upon it. He who attempts to improve
upon nature either lacks judgment or
is endowed with a conceit so oolossal
that there is no health in him. Be
reverent before nature and honest with
yourself, and your art will ring true
every time. All of you, it is true, will
not sing the song of the nightingale,
because you were not all born nightin-

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gales; but the blackbird's lay is sweet,
and the thrush and the oriole fill the
woods with melody. Even the homely
robin and the linnet have modest little
notes of their own which are pleasant to
the ear of a dewy April morning. Of
all the songsters in creation there is
only one, I believe, whose lay is uni-
versally condemned — and that is the
parrot."

The greater the artist, I think, the
more certain is he to cling religiously to
nature, not only for his inspiration^ but
for the actual material of his creations.
Rodin not long since said to an inter-
viewer, "All my attention as an artist
is devoted to reproducing exactly what
I see in nature. I do not endeavor to
* express something.* Those who have a
pre-conceived idea — an inspiration as
they call it — are seldom able to render
their ideal. Those, on the contrary, who

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charm us by their talent have done
nothing throughout the ages but repro-
duce nature. They copy as closely as
ever they can the most beautiful, the
most admirable, the most perfect thing
in the world — ^which is nature/*
This does not mean, however, that an
artist must necessarily be a mere ma-
chine, that he has no intellectual liberty
of choice in regard to what he shall rep-
resent and how he shall represent it.
Art includes every object of intrinsic
beauty that was ever created by human
hands. The Turkish rug, the Chinese
keramic, the Moorish carving, the Jap-
anese color-print and the Gothic cathe-
dral are just as truly art in the highest
sense as the Greek marble or the mod-
em paintmg. But there are certain lim-
its beyond which an artist may not step,
and all art which has attained to great-
ness has been the sincere expression,

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not only of the individual artist, but of
the race to which he belongs, and the
epoch in which he lives. It will not do
for Americans to make Oriental rugs or
Japanese color-prints; and we have all
seen and deplored the Japanese at-
tempt to assimilate and reproduce our
own occidental art — ^have shuddered
indeed at the brilliant and hollow shell
without a soul. Is it not enough for us
to admire without attempting to imi-
tate, to surround ourselves with the
beauty of all ages and all peoples while
calmly pursuing the type of beauty
which it is given to us to see as none
others have been able to see it ? Now,
if I am not much mistaken, the form of
beauty which appeals to us as it has
appealed to no other race in any other
epoch of the world's history is the
poetry of out-of-door nature, her mys-
tery, and her ever-varying and shifting
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moods. Surely in this wide field there
remains to us a sufficient latitude of
choice both as regards the subjects we
shall paint and the manner in which
we shall render our impressions. It is
always open to us to choose our direc-
tion. In each of us there is a Dr. Jekyll
and a Mr. Hyde, and in art as in life
it depends on ourselves which shall rule.
When I was a student in Paris away
back in the seventies, a group of young
artists who were at that time making
some stir in the art world asserted with
a great deal of unnecessary noise and
bluster that good painting could glorify
the most revolting subject. The sub-
ject was nothing, the craftsmanship
everjrthing. I remember that I was
temporarily caught up in the swirl of
the movement and that for a time I
ran with the shouting iconoclasts; and
the memory of this makes me still le-
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From a photoffraph, copyright by N. E. Montross

W. L. Lathrop— "At Dusk'

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THE TRUE IMPRESSIONISM

nient with any youngster who raises the
old cry — ^false as it is. It is a phase —
one of the growing pains of adolescence
which are normal and to be expected.
If we only remember that, we shall have
no cause to worry. I believe that every
young painter must at some time wor*-
ship at the shrine of technique, just as
every youth who is to grow up to true
and generous manhood must at some
period of his boyish career be a socialist.
But it is a sign of mental atrophy — of
arrested development, when the youth
or the artist fails to graduate out of
this chrysalis stage.
Nature is not all beautiful by any
means. But why should we choose to
perpetuate her ugly side ? I believe it to
be one of the artist's chief functions,
as it should be his chief delight, to
watch for the rare mood when she wafts
aside the veil of the commonplace and

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shows US her inner soul in some be-
wildering vision of poetic beauty. I
should not care personally to hold a
brief for the opponents of this view —
nor should I know how to support it.
Yet a painter of world-wide reputation
once said to me that he positively hated
a picture in which there was a moon.
He declared that any picture which de-
pended for its appeal upon the beauty
of the subject was weak-kneed art, pub-
licly advertising its own weakness. The
very perfection of craftsmanship could
not save such a picture, he said. The
best and only answer to this sincere
critique is that the painter who made
it has remained all his life a craftsman
— a craftsman of the highest distinc-
tion if you will, but never an artist.
Now from all that has been said above,
it would appear that originality must
be the easiest of all qualities to attain.
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THE TRUE IMPRESSIONISM

But this is, unfortunately, not the case.
The facility is only apparent. The hard
and sober reality is that the personal
note is the most difficult of all things
for an artist to grasp and to hold. It
is only necessary to count over the
number of our truly original artists
(it can be done upon the ten fingers)
to see how true this statement is. One
of the oldest of our proverbs says that
to err is human. It is also human, un-
fortunately, to be a sheep — ^to do as
you see others do — ^to imitate the thing
which you admire; and the sad result
of this is that few ever learn to see the
thing which lies out in the sunlight
under their own very eyes. And this b
why originality — ^why true impression-
ism will ever remain one of the rarest
and most precious qualities in art.
Now it has doubtless been objected
that the present chapter, while profess-
[«si]

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ing to deal with impressionism, says
mighty little about the impressionists.
But I have failed singularly in my in-
tention if, by this time, I have not
made it clear that anyone who honestly
and sincerely records his impressions
of nature t^ in the truest sense an im-
pressionist — ^that Velasquez and Titian
and Rembrandt were as truly impres-
sionists as were Manet or Monet or
Sisley — ^because, in the canvases of
these great masters of the Renaissance,
there rings the true note of personality
— ^proof positive of their honesty, their
reverence, and their humility before
nature. To tell the truth, the so-called
French impressionists were far more ac-
curately termed luminarists, or painters
of light. Their special achievement in
art was a purely technical triumph —
the discovery that by the use of broken
color in its prismatic simplicity the

[2S2]

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THE TRUE IMPRESSIONISM

pulsating, vibrating effect of light oould
be transferred to the surface of a can-
vas. But they were neither the fathers
of impressionism nor were they es-
pecially distinguished in this line. As
a matter of fact, they were somewhat
deficient in the quality of personal
vision, and their rage to secure the
effect of light at all hazards led to a
certain monotony of technique which
tended to blunt the personal note in
their work.

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XXI

THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN
ART*

We hear with increasing frequency
to-day the statement that art is uni-
versal and without a country; that,
being the record of abstract beauty, it
cannot be confined within stated geo-
graphical limits ; that the terms " French
art,*' "English art,*' etc, are therefore
absurd. Art is art Umt bonnement, and
that is all there is to it.
According to these critics, the mere
fact that a man with the temperamental
sense of beauty chances to be bom in
France or in Holland does not neces-
sarily make him a French or a Dutch
painter. If the Frenchman were brought
up in Holland, and the Hollander in

* Reprinted by consent of the North American Review.
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France, the Frenchman would then in-
evitably belong to the Dutch school and
the Dutchman would develop as a
French impressionist. Each, being tem-
peramentally sensitive to beauty, would
simply respond to the appeal of his en-
vironment.
Now, if this is correct, there could, of
course, be no such thing as American
art. But that there is such a thing — an
art which would have been impossible
but for the evolution of the American
man, as distinct from the men of Ger-
many, France, Spain, or even England
— ^is precisely what I hope to demon-
strate in this final chapter. And that
this American art is destined to grow
rapidly in power and distinction, until
it occupies for its little time the fore-
most place in the world of art, is not, I
think, beyond the power of reasonable
demonstration.

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Let us first clear the ground by re-
hearsing those points upon which both
parties are agreed.

All admit, of course, that art is the
record of beauty in some one of its
myriad forms, be it a Persian rug, a
Japanese keramic, a Greek statue, or a
modern oil-painting. In each case, if the
beauty be of a sufficiently high order, the
result is art. We all admit also that art
is personality — that nature is only the
crude material from which art is made.
This crude material must be fused in
the alembic of the human soul, mixed
with the alloy of temperament, and col-
ored with the artist's personality before
it can be poured out into the final mould
and receive the name of art. It is the
artist's personality, in other words, that
makes the art. And just according to
the beauty or the individuality of his
temperament will be the beauty or the

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individuality of the artistic result. If he
be a poet, like Corot, the result will be
a poetic and delicate interpretation of
nature. If he be a colorist, like Monti-
celli, the result will be some such gor-
geous mosaic of splendid color as that
wonderful painter gave us. If he be a
purist of the fine, clean-cut intellectual
type, such as Saint-Gaudens, the result
will be something akin to the Sherman
monument that dignifies the entrance to
Central Park in New York.
But just here comes the dividing line
between the contending factions. What
is personality? One group declares
that personality is simply temperament
which plays freely within the artist's
soul; and, working upon whatever
chance material its environment affords,
transmutes this crude material into the
fine gold of art. The opposing group,
while admitting that the basis of artistic

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personality is temperament, asserts that
this temperament is bound hand and
foot by the inherited traits and charac-
teristics of a thousand ancestors, and
that the Frenchman brought up in Hol-
land would therefore always remain
essentially a Frenchman, in spite of his
Dutch surroundings. They claim also
that racial personality is just as im-
portant a factor in all good art as in-
dividual personality. They assert, more-
over, that no artist can possibly shake
off the racial chains that bind him, and
that any attempt to do so could only
result in some monstrous hybrid or
some feeble imitation not deserving the
name of art.
Each artist is, first of all, a unit of
some specified human group or race.
Therefore, if he truly and conscien-
tiously records his own impressions, he
will also record the accumulated im-

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pressions of the race to which he be-
longs. That he does this is amply proved
by the fact that any reasonably expert
judge will tell you whether a picture
belongs to the French or the Dutch or
the Scandinavian school, without know-
ing the name of the painter, or any-
thing more of the picture than the can-
vas itself discloses.

It is impossible, therefore, to avoid
the conclusion that racial individuality
in art is fact — and a very real and
solid fact at that. In some of our mod-
ern schools of painting, this racial char-
acter is so strong as quite to dominate
and submerge the individual note, so
that it is often difficult to distinguish
the work of one well-known painter
from that of some equally celebrated
fellow-artist. This is particularly true
of the Dutch school, for instance. In
fact, the whole art of the Netherlands

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is SO intensely "Dutch" that we may
know the characteristics of the Dutch
people as well by studying their art as
by reading all that has been written
about them.
Now, it is a curious thing that, while
we in America have, for the past twenty
years, been discussing the question of
whether any such thing as a national
school of art exists here, in Paris **VEcole
Americaine " has for fully as long a time
been recognized as a distinct school,
with a marked personal note of its own.
And it must be remembered that this
verdict was based upon a very partial
and imperfect knowledge of American
art even as it then existed ; for the *' Am-
erican School," as it was known to the
French writers of 1885, embraced only
a certain number of young American
artists who were living in France, and
whose whole art training had been

[«40l

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Charles Melville Dewey — ** October Evening "

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THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART

received in Paris under exclusively
French influences. In spite of this fact,
the French critics felt in the work of
Sargent, of John Alexander, of Mel-
chers, of Alexander Harrison and of
Saint-Gaudens, an exotic note, anew
point of view, whose chief characteristic
was an unusual directness and clarity
of vision, coupled with a corresponding
simplicity of statement.

A great French painter once said to
me: "You Americans have one ad-
vantage over all others. You have no
traditions. You can look straight at
nature out of your own eyes, while our
vision is clouded and obscured by the
inheritance of a thousand years."

If to the above list of names we add a
few others — ^Winslow Homer, Homer
Martin, John La Farge, George Inness,
Alexander H. Wyant, all those of
painters who were at that time at the

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full height of their powers, but who
were established at home on thb side
of the Atlantic — ^it will be seen that the
French were not mistaken in announc-
ing the appearance on the Western
horizon of a new and original school
of art.

Since the date above mentioned, art
in America has made such rapid strides
that a roll-call of American artists of
the first class taken to-day would have
to include three or four times as many
names as could have been mustered in
1885. And it is a significant fact that
this increase in the number of American
artists, and in the quality of their out-
put, has been coincident with a phe-
nomenal decrease in the number of
really great artists at present practising
abroad. This decrease has been par-
ticularly marked in France, which, dur-
ing the larger part of the nineteenth

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century, certainly led the world in all
matters connected with art. Yet in
France to-day we will search in vain
for any such body of painters as made
up the wonderful school of Barbizon,
which, in the fifty years beginning with
1830 and ending with 1880, gave the
world the greatest art it has seen since
the Italian, Dutch, and Spanish Re-
naissance of the sixteenth century.
It could hardly be expected, I suppose,
that this glorious time of blossom and
fruitage should repeat itself in France
during our own time. Indeed, all history
has shown that things do not so happen
in the domain of art. Art is a plant
whose seed germinates only under cer-
tain special and favoring conditions.
These conditions are really epochal in
their character, and they rarely recur
in the life of any one nation; or, if by
some specially happy chance they do

[«43]

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repeat themselves, it is only after the
lapse of many centuries.

To every energetic people there comes
sooner or later a time of great material
prosperity; it may be as the result of
successful wars, of territorial expansion
or of commercial supremacy. Whatever
the cause, this period of prosperity is
invariably accompanied by a tremen-
dous mental stir and awakening, and
this, in turn, is followed by a magni-
ficent outburst of art, which lasts for
fifty, or maybe a hundred years, and
dies away as it came.

Now, if ever in the history of the world
conditions have been ripe for the birth
of a great art movement, they are so in
America to-day. Titanic forces have
been at work for a century preparing
the way, extracting untold wealth from
a virgin soil; increasing this wealth an
hundredfold by the help of marvellous

[«44J

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scientific and mechanical genius; con-
quering, with the irresistible impulse of
a new people, every physical obstacle
that lay in their way, and building up
the richest and most powerful com-
munity the world has ever known. Its
early struggles are now apparently over,
and its surplus wealth is daily increas-
ing. The average of comfort is high and
the physical well-being of the people
seems practically assured. Whenever in
the course of history a nation attains to
this stage of development, it begins to
reach out toward the ideal, to demand
more of life and better than simple food
and shelter.

This is precisely what is taking place
in America to-day. There is a growing
demand for beauty in all its forms; for
the adornment of our public buildings;
— ^f or galleries of paintings and statuary,
for museums containing porcelains,

[«45l

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bronzes, textiles, prints and objects of
art of all kinds — ^a demand so insistent
that our municipalities and our legisla-
tures are everywhere beginning to re-
spond to the call of the people. This
movement, which may be said to have
started a scant ten years ago, is spread-
ing rapidly all over the country. To the
art museums in cities of the first class,
such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, have
already been added museums or regu-
lar yearly exhibitions in many cities of
the second or third class. Among these
may be mentioned Pittsburg, Worcester
Buffalo, Toledo, Minneapolis, Kansas
City, Atchison, Richmond, Charleston,
Atlanta, Memphis, Oakland, and Seat-
tle; while every year a number of names
is added to the list. Unless all signs fail,
therefore, we may expect during the
current cfentury an unprecedented de-

[«46]

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THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART

mand for art in the United States, and
we are certainly justified in assuming
that native artists of the first rank will
arise to meet the demand.

Conceding this much, it will be inter-
esting, and also I think quite possible,
to forecast the general trend of the
movement and the general character of
the new art — ^for new it is bound to be.

If the American painters of thirty
years ago had been separated into two
groups, the figure-painters on one side
and the landscape men on the other,
the balance would have been found to
be fairly even. If the same thing were
repeated to-day, fully two-thirds of our
ablest painters would be found in the
camp of the landscapists. This shifting
of the balance is most significant, for
it shows a new drift, a tendency on the
part of our artists to carry their easels
out into the open; to paint, or to try to

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paint, all of the shimmering, iridescent
effects that happen only under the great
blue arch of the sky; the glory of the
noonday sunlight, the pale beauty of
the dawn, the golden glow of sunset and
the brooding mystery of night.
Why, we may ask, this change of di-
rection ? The answer is simple: the art-
ists have discovered that most of the
unsolved problems of art lie in the open
air. They know by instinct that art, to
be alive, must move ever forward tow-
ard some new goal. If it remains in one
rut, it stagnates or dies. The end of
every great art movement has come
when its living, rushing, turbulent
waters have been congealed into icy
formulas — ^rules of thumb by the use oi
which the mere artisan can produce a
sort of ''near-art'' which is necessarily
without vitality or charm. The true
artist must always be an innovator, a

[248]

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tn >»

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THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART

pioneer in fresh fields, an adventurer
seeking new Eldorados. If he now goes
afield, therefore, it is because he knows
that in the domain of indoor figure-
painting there are few undiscovered
countries. This branch of art was ex-
ploited long ago by the old masters, and
their achievements were so transcend-
ent that any modern pa,inter who sets
out to equal or excel them in their own
chosen line must be endowed with a
large share of courage and self-confi-
dence*

Another cause of this universal return
to nature is doubtless the fact that our
lives are not, humanly speaking, so
beautiful as they once were. Our cloth-
ing is no longer picturesque. The ad-
vent of farm machinery has destroyed
much of the pastoral and bucolic beauty
of country life. The sowing and reaping
and binding and threshing that were

[«49l

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done by hand in the old days with such
splendid rhythmic swing of muscle are
now matters of revolving wheels and
clattering chains and knives. Even our
buildings have deteriorated — at least
from the axtisfs point of view; for the
comfortable villa farmhouse of the
present day does not cling lovingly to
the soil and become part of the environ-
ing landscape, as did the spreading,
low-hung buildings of our fathers. And
so, to quench the eternal thirst for
beauty, we must needs return once
more to kindly nature, whose beauty is
exhaustless and everlasting. Her skies
have lost none of their early crystal-
line charm of color; her hills and her
rock-bound coasts are as grand as ever;
her trees, her rivers and her spread-
ing fields are as beautiful and as ap-
pealing now as in the days of Hesiod.
But, precious beyond all other things,

[«50l

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her exquisite and ever-varying effects
— ^that happen because of the change
from night tq day and from day to night
again — ^are spread out always before us,
an endless feast of beauty for those who
have eyes to see and minds to appre-
ciate.

Nevertheless, it is quite possible that,
in the very changed conditions of our
civilization, there may lurk wonderful
and hitherto unsuspected opportunities
for our future artists, and especially our
figure-painters. There is certainly a
strange picturesqueness in some of our
modem steel mills, with their cyclopean
forces at work against backgrounds of
whirling steam and glowing furnace.
Even our sky-scrapers have an unusual
beauty of their own, and the sky-line of
lower New York is far from being ugly
or uninteresting. Another field that is
replete with possibilities is the teeming

[«51]

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and kaleidoscopic life of our city slums,
which the inexorable law of migration
has crowded with strange peoples from
the far comers of the earth ; peoples who
are as yet unassimilated» who still wear
their exotic costumes and live their
strange, foreign lives in our very midst.
There has already been some attempt
to use this exhaustless material (unfor-
tunately, as yet, without adequate tech-
nical skill), but when the trained master
shall paint for us the life of our streets
with all its vital and original character,
we shall welcome his pictures as a price-
less addition to the world's store of
precious things.

I have as yet made no mention of
mural painting, which is, of course, des-
tined to occupy a very important place
in the^art of the future. Thousands of
new public and private buildings all
over the country will call for decoration,

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and I have no hesitation in predicting
that the opportunity thus afforded will
result in some bewilderingly great dis-
covery in advance of our present-day
knowledge of that art — ^a step in ad-
vance at least as important as that made
by Puvis de Chavannes when he painted
the out-of-door atmosphere upon the
walls of the Pantheon in Paris. It is at
least certain that the movement in this
same direction will be pushed much
farther than at present, and that open-
air effects and open-air tones will be
used with increasing frequency by our
mural painters, because on this line
only can they hope to achieve any not-
able advance over their predecessors.
The fact is that the open has claimed
us as a people ! We devote ourselves with
ever-increasing enthusiasm to out-of-
door pleasures and out-of-door pursuits;
we have learned to love out-of-door

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nature and out-of-door beauty. It is our
best achievement as a nation; and our
artists in this are, therefore, simply
keeping step with the march of modem
civilization.

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FA4373.16.10

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